The Injustice of Misdiagnosing 'Shaken Baby Syndrome': Grandmother Released After 11 Years in Jail

A grandmother is now free after spending 11 years in prison from a wrongful conviction of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). This justice happened thanks to the efforts of the Loyola Law School’s Project for the Innocent who got involved. What a great bunch of people who work towards freeing innocent people.

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Maria Mendez was originally sentenced to 25 years for the death of her nine-month-old grandson. This was thanks to a flawed medical conclusions of SBS or Abusive Head Trauma. However, project for the innocent attorneys and law students found medical evidence there was not originally considered by the court.

These cases usually involve Child Protective Services (CPS). Families often have more than one child, and the other children can be medically kidnap through this criminal organization that pretends to help children and families. Strangers end up allegedly taking care of the children, while parents lose custody permanently, even though they were never charged with any crime whatsoever.

There are cases where CPS involvement results in parents or grandparents facing criminal charges, and this includes SBS:

• Shaken Baby Syndrome
• Multiple broken bones
• Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy/Medical Child Abuse

There are often valid medical reasons for a child's injuries, but these valid reasons are also often ignored in favor of simply kidnapping a child from their loving parents, where they are forever separated by the authoritarian tyranny of the state.

The medical establishment is also involved in this tyranny through their medical authority, as a child abuse specialist doctor or pediatrician is often involved. Other medical experts or specialists are often ignored in favor of the alleged superior "authority" and "expertise" of pediatric child abuse specialists.

11 years ago, Dr. Carol Berkowitz, the Director of the Child Abuse Fellowship at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, was the only doctor to testify that grandmother Maria Mendez unquestioningly abused her grandson. Other doctors who disagreed didn't get a chance to speak. She still isn't backing down from her claims from 11 year ago, where she was the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Doctors like Berkowitz are ignoring alternative explanations for the injuries. They seem to be so full of themselves that only they can be right. Testimony of innocent victims of the authoritarian tyranny of the establishment, like Ms. Mendez, stand little change against the "expert" testimony of medical authorities.

The LA Times covered the release of Ms. Mendez after 11 years of being wrongfully convicted for her grandsons death. New evidence came forth to show that an alternative was just as plausible as the witch-hunting conclusion that it was SBS child abuse.

The child abuse specialist doctor was wrong, but her testimony held the weight in court. Maria Mendez had always proclaimed her innocence, saying her grandson Emmanuel collapsed and stopped breathing in December 2006.

She is now 64 and free to live her live again. But she has to take a plea deal for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter in order to get out on time served. She isn't innocent in the eyes of the court, as prosecutor stand by the "evidence" provided by child abuse specialist Dr. Berkowitz from 11 years ago that Emmanuel's death was from child abuse.

However, medical experts who testified for Mendez during a recent hearing said her case and others highlight increasing doubts about accepted theories of shaken baby syndrome.

Mendez was arrested and charged with murdering her grandson seven months after the baby’s death, court records show. During her trial in 2009, a prosecutor told jurors that Mendez had fallen into a depression after her husband died and became frustrated after her teenage daughter got pregnant with Emmanuel. The prosecutor argued that on Dec. 13, 2006, while babysitting, Mendez snapped and fatally injured the baby.

After a 3-day deliberation, jurors were deadlocked on the murder charge, but agreed on charging Mendez with 2 lesser crimes: "assault causing a child’s death and causing a child to suffer unjustifiable pain or injury resulting in death".

Project for the Innocent at Loyola Law School was later contacted, tracking down medical records that the trail attorney had not received. After new medical experts reviewed the case, they concluded the evidence suggested an accidental death, contrary to the so-called expert authority of child abuse specialist Dr. Berkowitz. Roland Auer, a physician who reviewed the case, said:

"Dr. Berkowitz's opinion that the child’s head injury was inflicted … rather than accidental is unsupportable by any scientific evidence."

Auer also wrote a 15-page report, stating how a baby's brain injury looks the same whether it's abusive or accidental.

"There is no way of inferring abuse," Auer wrote, "and the non-science has been called out in recent publications."

There is medical tyranny at play in the court system. Parents and grandparents are being convicted and sent to long-term jail sentences when they never even abused a child. Fifteen people have had their convictions overturned for allegedly injuring or killing an infant by violent shaking.

Some like Mendez have to plea to lesser charges in order to be released from their cages when they are innocent the whole time. This is the racket of the justice system, where people often get railroaded into accepting lesser charges or face heavier punishment if they dare to stand ground on their innocence.

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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References:

• Grandmother Wrongly Accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome is Freed from Prison After 11 Years
• Judge orders release of woman who served 11 years behind bars in grandson's death
• Loyola Law School’s Project for the Innocent
• The Innocence Project

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