In the 1990s and early 2000s, Shaken Baby Syndrome was considered medical fact. When doctors found subdural bleeding, retinal hemorrhages, and brain swelling - the so-called \"triad\" - the diagnosis was automatic: violent abuse.
This medical certainty sent hundreds of people to prison, including Tasha Shelby and Marsha Mills - two women whose cases we've been following throughout this series. Both convicted based solely on expert testimony that claimed their guilt was scientifically undeniable.
But was it?
Professor Keith Findley joins us to examine the evolution of SBS science. As co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project and co-author of the definitive Cambridge University Press book \"Shaken Baby Syndrome: Investigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy,\" Professor Findley has spent decades studying how medical assumptions became legal fact - and how that \"fact\" has been systematically challenged by modern research.
We explore how birth trauma, medical conditions, and even short falls can mimic the signs once thought exclusive to violent shaking. We examine why 34 people have been exonerated from SBS convictions as courts slowly recognize the diagnosis is unreliable. And we discuss why cases like Tasha's and Marsha's represent a much broader crisis in forensic medicine.
From the biomechanics of infant injury to the legal standards that allowed flawed science into courtrooms, Professor Findley explains how medical overconfidence created a generation of wrongful convictions - and what it will take to prevent future injustices when science masquerades as certainty.
The triad that once seemed unshakeable has been shaken to its core. But for those already convicted, scientific progress may have come too late.
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