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In this article, you’ll discover:
In nearly every shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma case, the critical evidence used to charge the offense and convict the accused parent is the parents’ statements.
Shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma is the child abuse pediatric world’s attempt to explain how a child was physically abused in the absence of external, physical evidence, such bruising, contusions, cuts, fractures to the scalp, skull, or neck. The most commonly cited findings used by child abuse pediatricians (or “CAP”) to support this “diagnosis” is the following:
SBS or abusive head trauma cases are unique because, simply put, doctors (typically a child abuse pediatrician) supply the entire res gestae of the offense. As law professors Keith Findley and D. Michael Risinger described in a recent article on challenging AHT convictions:
The experts opine as to the actus reus — violent shaking, or shaking with impact, had to have been employed to produce such injuries. The experts likewise opine as to mens rea — the shaking had to have been so violent that it could not have been accidental; it had to have been intentional, or at least reckless (the typical elements required for child abuse or homicide). And finally, the experts opine — erroneously — that because the child would have become immediately comatose and unresponsive, the last person with the child had to be the perpetrator, thereby establishing identity.
It is because the testimony by doctors supply this triad of critically important components necessary in any case – actus reus, mens rea, and identity – this has led many to refer to this SBS/AHT proofs from doctors as a “medical diagnosis of murder” or child abuse.
Thus, there are three components required for a child abuse pediatrician to establish the crime, as well as identify a perpetrator:
The first two components establish the crime of abuse, while the third component the identity of the perpetrator.
The most common way to establish all three – but most importantly the third – is to get admissions from the parents about what was happening to the child when he/she crashed or arrested:
If law enforcement or CPS are unable to get those admissions, their attempt to “identify” the perpatrator of abuse becomes limited. In that case, the only alternative they have is to double down on the idea that the caregiver who was last in charge of the child or infant, perpetrated the abuse. That, too, presents serious problems.
The simple act of hiring an attorney to act as a buffer between you and the police, or you and CPS, can prevent you from making statements to the police or CPS that could lead to a false or wrongful allegation of shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma.
Attorney Mark Satawa is a skilled lawyer based in Southfield, Michigan, who has helped numerous clients like you navigate the intricacies of shaken baby syndrome law. With years of experience, he is prepared to defend you against the biased and flawed conclusions that typify SBS accusations and investigations.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Satawa Law, PLLC today to schedule an initial consultation.
It’s not what evidence could be lost. Instead, it’s what evidence the police and CPS are allowed to create if you delay hiring an attorney in a shaken baby syndrome case.
In other words, every time you speak to CPS and every time you make a statement to the police, you risk that your statement will be taken out of context, twisted, flipped on its head, and manipulated into some admission that you abused, neglected, or mistreated your child.
For that reason, involvement by an experienced and qualified attorney to handle a shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma case is critically important. They will know what buzzwords the police and CPS are looking for and what you need to avoid saying to prevent that kind of speculation.
You should not have to be engaged in navigating that difficult balance between helping your child, helping the medical professionals treat your child, and saying something that will lead to a false or wrongful allegation of shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma.
There are so many biased and flawed presumptions and medical conclusions about shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma cases that you can’t list them all. They include presumptions such as:
When a doctor shares these presumptions with you, can you believe them and trust them? That’s why it’s crucial to have a lawyer who understands the science and the medicine behind this flawed medical diagnosis known as shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma.
If a doctor says a CT scan or MRI shows “mixed density fluid” in your child’s brain, that usually means there’s both old fluid and new fluid there. This diagnosis can be a problem if they’re investigating abuse, because it takes away the ability to pinpoint when an injury happened — and that timing is necessary in trying to identify the perpetrator of abuse. So instead, the doctor might call it a “hematohygroma.” That means the doctor is claiming (without any medical or scientific basis behind it), that the mixed density is not caused by two separate ages of fluid – but rather a mix of blood and spinal fluid, which have different densities.
After a doctor convinces you it’s a hematohygroma, and you accept that as a reasonable explanation for what caused your child to go into respiratory distress or an altered state of mental consciousness, the doctors and hospital social workers will try to get you to speculate whether you engaged in violent shaking of the child.
This speculation is a dangerous road to navigate alone without the assistance of an attorney that is well-versed in the medicine, science, and the flaws behind shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma as a diagnosis.
Attorney Mark Satawa is a skilled lawyer based in Southfield, Michigan, who has helped numerous clients like you navigate the intricacies of shaken baby syndrome law. With years of experience, he is prepared to defend you against the biased and flawed conclusions that typify SBS accusations and investigations.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Satawa Law, PLLC today to schedule an initial consultation.
Early on, a defense attorney can help you control the narrative. Once the narrative is built by investigators, it’s difficult to change.
What happened in the days, weeks, or months leading up to this hospitalization is of critical importance:
Did the child have any kind of symptoms that could be associated with having a seizure, such as:
In the days, weeks, and months before hospitalization, did you take the child to your pediatrician or the hospital because you thought the child was experiencing a seizure or some neurologic impairment?
If you can establish your narrative before an investigation, maybe CPS and the police will look at the earlier hospitalization or visit to the pediatrician as evidence that something more was going on with this child and had been going on for days, weeks, or months. That would certainly suggest maybe something other than abuse is what’s going on.
Otherwise, you could find yourself in a situation like this: imagine you brought your child to the hospital a week or two before the current hospitalization. At that earlier visit, the episode might have been labeled a BRUE — a “brief resolved unexplained event.” As a parent, you might understandably question this. After all, the symptoms were evident and dramatic: your child went limp, then stiffened, their eyes rolled back, and they began vomiting.
Ten days later, the same symptoms occur. You rush your child to the hospital again. But this time, instead of being told it was an unexplained event, you’re told your child has been shaken and abused.
So again, getting ahead of that narrative, trying to provide the history, the context, the documented hospitalizations and visits to the pediatrician becomes extremely important.
This part of the case is more critical in shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma allegations than just about any other type of criminal defense I can think of. Being accused of any crime is an awful experience. Being falsely accused of a crime if you are innocent is even worse. However, nothing equals being falsely accused of harming your child, particularly when the child is this young.
I can’t imagine anything more harrowing to go through as a young parent than the accusation that you’ve hurt your infant at a time when your child is most vulnerable and unable to protect themselves. It’s so difficult for parents to process that accusation, to come to grips with it, and to live with it. Every attorney who handles these cases must understand that they’re dealing with parents who are at the lowest point in their lives.
When you face an allegation like this, it’s easy for it to overwhelm you to the point where you start to blame yourself and think that you must have done something wrong. That’s why it’s not uncommon for parents facing an accusation like this to have thoughts of self-harm or not take care of themselves.
For these reasons, an attorney must constantly check in on their client’s mental health and emotional well-being. The lawyer needs to ensure that the family is supporting them. To the extent that not every family member is supporting them, the attorney needs to connect them with supportive family members who are on their side.
The lawyer needs to make them understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that they are not alone. You need to ensure they’re talking to someone, whether that be a therapist or a psychologist. If they are a person of faith, they can speak to a priest, minister, or rabbi.
If they are thinking of harming themselves, drinking too much, or abusing substances, the attorney needs to ensure they know of the resources available to them for help.
After a recent shaken baby and abusive head trauma case I won, I received an email from the client thanking me. I asked him if he needed anything more from me. He responded, “Mark, for the first time in two years, I was able to take my son grocery shopping. I don’t need anything. That’s all I need.”
It was a reminder that as a lawyer, you’re not only focused on winning the legal problem, but you’re representing the rights of a parent who can’t spend time with or make decisions for their child. In many cases, they aren’t even allowed to see, hold, touch, or physically be in the same room as their child.
No human being should ever have to go through that alone. As an attorney, you must ensure they have a support network around them that helps them navigate and cope with what they’re going through.
For more information on the benefits of hiring a defense attorney for SBS accusations in Michigan, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (248) 356-8320 today.
Attorney Mark Satawa is a skilled lawyer based in Southfield, Michigan, who has helped numerous clients like you navigate the intricacies of shaken baby syndrome law. With years of experience, he is prepared to defend you against the biased and flawed conclusions that typify SBS accusations and investigations.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Satawa Law, PLLC today to schedule an initial consultation.