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 is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as the long-held medical diagnoses have come under increased scrutiny.

The New Jersey Supreme Court determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, which is also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials.

The 6-1 ruling deals with the trials of two men facing charges in separate cases, where the young victims showed symptoms that have come to be associated with shaken baby syndrome.

The justices, using an abbreviation for the syndrome, concluded in their lengthy decision that “there was no test supporting a finding 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 put more weight on the views of individual biomechanical engineers over the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.”

That, she said, includes all the medical discipline 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 every other U.S. state allows testimony in court on the syndrome and “every other court that has considered the question” has held such evidence as admissible.

“No case has ever concluded that evidence of SBS/AHT is unreliable,” she wrote. “And no case has ever found its reliability sufficiently questioned to preclude its admission at a civil or criminal trial.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, the syndrome is a result of forcefully shaking an infant or a toddler, which can damage or destroy a 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 years of age, with more than 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

But defense lawyers and some in the medical and scientific communities argue that shaken baby diagnosis is flawed 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 “landmark” moment, saying it reflected the importance of relying on “reliable, well-supported scientific evidence” in criminal cases.

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