Shaken baby syndrome is a problem with the brain, not blunt force trauma to the stomach. From the WestLaw article linked, it's clear that everyone agreed there was a distended stomach, and other problems there, which was initially diagnosed as blunt force trauma.I'd like to see your evidence for this. Are you using a transcript of the second court case or some other way of getting exact words? Because as pointed out in the 1992 transcript posted above, a large number of medical witnesses all concurred, it seems unlikely that all of them would have made the same mistake. Do you know exactly what he really said?
Now this (definitely biased, I'm just using it as a source for two facts here, a quote and something else) article has this quote from Sabrina:
And"When Clive [Stafford-Smith, a British attorney and campaigner to end the death penalty,] took my case years later, he went to the hospital and got Walter's records and found out that he had a kidney disease," she says.
And it is the same medical examiner according to this article:A medical examiner also testified that he had changed his opinion on the cause of death and now believed it was due to the kidney condition.
Sabrina Butler-Smith
State: MississippiConvicted: 1990Exonerated: 1995Race: BlackDNA used in exoneration? No Reasons for wrongful conviction:False or misleading forensic evidence Official misconductFalse confessionSabrina's Wrongful Conviction Sabrina Butler-Smith was a Mississippi teenager when she became a victim...
www.witnesstoinnocence.org
In addition, the medical examiner changed his opinion about Walter's cause of death, which he now believed occurred due to a kidney malady.
In short, it wasn't Shaken Baby syndrome, nor accused of being shaken baby syndrome.
I honestly had the same initial opinion about it being a quibble for procedure, but then I remembered how pissed the judge was in the Rittenhouse case, and it made me think that this isn't a minor thing. It being "reversible error" tends to give credence to that, as I know that frequently trials have errors that don't get overturned, but really the yelling from the Rittenhouse judge stuck with me. Basically, I figured my initial impression about this was wrong.Yes, the prosecutor's last sentence edged too close to the fifth amendment for comfort. If he hadn't gotten cocky and made that last jab the case may not have been overturned at all. But again, that's hardly police misconduct and is actually some very mild prosecutorial misconduct, as I said, this is more a quibble about procedure than any established violation worthy of being in this thread.