NJ high court rules shaken baby syndrome testimony unreliable and inadmissible in child abuse cases

New Jersey’s highest court ruled Thursday that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome was scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as long-standing medical diagnoses face increased scrutiny.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanics community” and therefore is not “reliable enough” to be admitted to trial.

The 6-1 ruling concerns the trials of two men accused in separate cases, in which the young victims exhibited symptoms that are now associated with shaken baby syndrome.

The justices, using an abbreviation for the syndrome, concluded in their lengthy ruling that “no test existed to conclude that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child.”

But Justice Rachel Wainer Apter, in a strongly worded dissent, said the other justices gave more weight to the opinions of individual biomechanical engineers rather than the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.”

This, she said, includes all medical disciplines involved in the diagnosis and treatment of shaken baby syndrome: pediatrics, child abuse pediatrics, neurology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiology, ophthalmology and emergency medicine.

Wainer Apter also noted that all other U.S. states allow court testimony about the syndrome and that “every other court that has considered the issue” has found such evidence admissible.

“No case has ever found that SBS/AHT evidence is unreliable,” she wrote. “And no case has ever been so doubted as to preclude its admission in any civil or criminal trial.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, the syndrome results from forcefully shaking an infant or young child, which can damage or destroy the child’s brain cells and cause permanent brain damage or even death. Symptoms include bleeding around the brain, brain swelling, and bleeding in the eyes.

Prosecutors and medical societies say the syndrome is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2, with more than 1,000 cases reported in the United States each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

But defense attorneys and some in the medical and scientific communities say the shaken baby diagnosis is wrong and has led to wrongful convictions, pointing to overturned convictions or dropped charges in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan.

The state attorney general’s office declined to comment Thursday, but the public defender’s office hailed the decision as a “historic” moment, saying it reflected the importance of relying on “reliable, well-supported scientific evidence” in criminal cases.

“When the science is uncertain, the stakes are simply too high to allow unsupported expert opinions to decide a person’s guilt or justify separating children from their parents,” Cody Mason, chief attorney for the public defender’s office, said in a statement.