In ‘shaken-baby’ debate, studies disagree

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On Oct. 16, 1995, Edmunds was caring for her two daughters and another child when Cindy Beard dropped off her daughter, Natalie.

Natalie had had an ear infection and had vomited in recent days, but her parents say that appeared to have cleared up. But Edmunds says Natalie was unusually fussy that morning and refused to take a bottle.

Edmunds, who was five months pregnant with her third daughter, says she put Natalie down with a propped bottle and went to tend to the other children. When she went back to retrieve Natalie, the girl was crying and limp, her face slick with regurgitated formula.

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At her 1996 trial, Huntington testified it was “highly probable” that Natalie was injured within two hours of being treated. That would mean the fatal injury occurred while Natalie was in Edmunds’ care.

What changed his mind was a later case involving a child with injuries similar to Natalie’s. That child had a “lucid interval” of more than 15 hours before the onset of symptoms, leading Huntington to acknowledge that Natalie could have been injured long before she was dropped off at Edmunds’.

Edmunds’ attorney cited other studies in which there were lucid intervals of 24 hours between injury and death.

Quest for a new trial
George Nichols, a former Kentucky medical examiner, testified recently on Edmunds’ new trial request. It was his conclusion that Natalie had some kind of choking event, and that a lack of oxygen to the brain resulted in fatal brain injury.

Prosecutors dismissed Plunkett, Nichols and others as “a fringe group of doctors.”

Dr. Thomas Bohan, a forensic physicist and attorney, has tried to get the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institute of Justice to evaluate the medical and legal arguments.

In May, he and other specialists who are members of the self-styled Evidence-Based Medicine Group are meeting in Chicago to present papers on shaken-baby syndrome. Bohan, who is also vice president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, says it’s not good enough to say you can’t really study shaken-baby because you can’t shake actual babies to test the hypothesis.

“The point is you don’t send people off to prison for 50 years and break up families because you don’t want to do the work to validate it,” Bohan says.

Audrey Edmunds was hoping that science would set her free.

About once a month, the 45-year-old mother and her daughters visit in the prison cafeteria. They talk on the phone several times a week.

“I’ve lost a part of their life,” says Edmunds, whose husband divorced her several years ago because he couldn’t wait any longer. “But there’s a lot that we stay strong with, too.”

In late March, a judge ruled on Edmunds’ motion for a new trial. Her witnesses and newly discovered medical evidence, while strong, did not outweigh trial evidence, he ruled.

Motion denied.

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Her attorney has filed a notice of appeal. In the meantime, Edmunds has a parole hearing in October.

The board has already turned her down three times.

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