#235 Jason Flom with Amanda Brumfield

a skull fracture and brain bleed. The medical examiner opined that the injuries weren't consistent with a playpen fall. In cases of the accidental death of a child, authorities often assume abuse and typically attributed to the last person to care for the child. In this tragic accident, that person was Amanda Broomfield, who was charged with multiple counts, including first degree murder ignoring a head injury in a different

stage of healing. The medical examiner said that the injuries were of a verity, they could only have come from abuse or a car accident, and the state said that Olivia was too young to have been able to climb out of the playpen. Amanda's expert witnesses were barred from

testifying due to untimely disclosure to the prosecution. Without expert testimony to refute the state's case, and with the added pressure of national attention, in part because of Amanda's longest strange famous father, actor Billy Bob Thornton, Amanda was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years. It took the Innocent Project of Florida, along with the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, to finally set her free after nine

long years. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrangful Conviction. Today's episode, Well, this is going to upset you if you are apparent, if you are an uncle or an aunt, if you're someone who's ever babysat for someone's child, if you're someone who loves children, if you're someone who cares about justice. This story is it's important. Unfortunately, there are things about it that are typical and then there's some

really extraordinary things about this case as well. And without further ado, I'm going to introduce our two guests today. One is going to be familiar to our audience. This is someone who I will I put her on a pedestal. Kate Judson is the director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, one of the leading experts in the world on shaking baby syndrome. And Kate, I really appreciate

you being back here again on the show. Thank you so much for having me Jason, that's always such a pleasure. And with her is the woman who lived through this unspeakable tragedy and saga, Amanda Brumfield. Amanda was wrongfully convicted and when you hear her story, you're gonna want to scream and then you're going to do something about it. So Amanda, thank you for being here and for your courage. Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to have

the opportunity. And when I say this story is unique, I don't think we've ever covered the story of someone who was wrongly convicted who also happens to be the daughter of a major movie star. I think that's only important to mention because if this could happen to Amanda, it could happen to anyone. Of course, Amanda, you were born back in the nineteen seventy nine. I don't want to give away your age, but it's part of your story. And and your father was Billy Bob Thornton, right, correct.

How was your childhood? My mom and my dad, Billy had me, and of course to Los seventy nine, mom and Billy split up and I was about one and my mom remarried my dad, Jimmy, who then raised me until I was eighteen years old, even after he and my mom divorced when I was about nine or ten in a small small town in Arkansas, graduated with all of thirty eight people and just kind of went from there. So would you describe your childhood? I mean, when you

think back on it, was it a happy childhood? Absolutely? You know, we didn't have a lot, but I didn't know that we didn't have a lot. I had great, great grandparents who were involved, and a wonderful dad who was there for me and and really instilled good values and morals and work ethic. So I had a great childhood. Okay, So now let's fast forward to two thousand and eight,

where we get to the heart of the story. Amanda, tell us about your life at the time this happened and your relationship with Heather Murphy and her daughter Olivia. My then husband worked for a restaurant chain and one of his employees, who was Olivia's mother. She just really didn't have much of anyone, and I kind of stepped in to take care of Olivia when she was born.

She was actually my god daughter. We were in small town in Florida, just outside of Orlando, and I would take care of Olivia three or four nights a week, along with my own children, and a lot of times Olivia's sister Isabella as well. Heather. Now we're very good friends.

Were functioned like an extended family. It sounds as wholesome as anything could probably be, and it's a scene that is probably taking place tonight, and households and small towns and cities all across the country, right just friends and godparents doing what they can for each other, helping out. And then, of course, everything went as horribly wrong as anything could go, although, as is typical in these cases, at the outset, it wasn't clear what had happened or

what the extent of the problem was. And it started with a fall, as so many of these shaken baby cases do. And this is where I like to turn to you, Kate, and I'm so glad you're here, because it's so important for people to understand this because these type of accidents happened children. Fall is just part of growing up, but sometimes the consequences are dire. Kate set the stage for us what happened that night and how

did it result in Amanda going to prison? Well, Jason, Amanda's case really progressed, like so many of these cases involving shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma. She was a person who had a loving relationship with this child. There was no reason to believe she would ever do anything to hurt her. And while she was babysitting her god daughter climbed out of a pack and play and

fell onto a hard floor, a carpeted concrete floor. And what people sometimes say about these cases, and what was said in Amanda's case, is that that kind of a fall cannot be fatal or caused very serious injury in a child out And that's just not true, even though kids fall all the time, and most of the time they're not badly injured. In fact, kids have falls that we would expect to cause all sorts of problems and

they walk away from it fine. Some children don't. Some children are catastrophically injured from falls that may not initially seem serious, and that can be for all different kinds of reasons, including reasons we don't know or understand. So it's fairly common to have a case like this where a child has an accident and then the last person caregiving is accused of abusing them, or the person to call nine one one is accused of abusing the child.

And please anyone who hasn't already listened to our series Wrangful Conviction jug Science are coverage of shaking baby syndrome features our guest today, Kate Judson. She and the host, my great friend Josh Dubin, do an amazing job of really laying out in clear and concise terms why this is just absolutely junk science and we're certainly going to get into that today. And Kate, can you talk a

little bit about the origins of shaken baby syndrome. Yes, well, Dr Norman guth Kelch is often credited as being the first person to hypothesize about shaken baby syndrome, and Dr gut Kelch, in his later years was definitely very concerned about the way his hypothesis was being used, and he was the first pediatric neurosurgeon in Great Britain, and he had these medical findings that are often associated with trauma,

but the children had apparently suffered no trauma. So what we're talking about is what's sometimes called the constellation of findings or the triad of injuries that some physicians believe allow them to make a diagnosis of shaking, and that is subdural hematoma which is bleeding between the brain and the skull under the protective coverings of the brain, retinal hemorrhage which is bleeding in the back of the eye, and cerebral edema or en cephalopathy basically brains dwelling and

brain dysfunction. And he saw these things and he thought, wow, these are normally associated with some kind of a trauma, right an accident or abuse, but he was confused because

there was not external injury. Children often didn't have fractures or bruises, so he was wondering if it could be because at the time where he was from, in Northern England, it was relatively common for parents to discipline naughty children by giving them what they often referred to as a good shake, and he was very concerned about this, and so he started cautioning in his writings against doing that, basically saying, we don't really know why these children have this,

but we think one of the reasons could be that they were shaken, and so parents should be told not to shake their children, and if a child comes in with these kinds of medical findings, doctors should ask the parents if the child might have been shaken. He wasn't saying that these findings were exclusively diagnostic of shaking, and he wasn't saying any of the stuff that I'm later like that the last person with the child must have shaken the child, or that these findings could only come

from child abuse. He was just wondering about one possible mechanism. And so in his later years he started to right and speak, urging a lot more caution, saying, I was just wondering about this, and that's how science progresses. We come up with a hypothesis, and we learned about it, and we test it. And I'm really unhappy with the way that this has progressed. Yeah, it progressed. The words

just stuck right. It's a catchy phrase, and it seems like in the hands of people who maybe we're intellectually incurious this became something that became a fallback when they didn't know what had really happened. And I believe too that there's part of us humans that have trouble processing the death of a child as being something that can happen naturally. So sometimes subconsciously it's easier to blame someone.

So many of the problems that we see in forensic sciences come from an idea that's seductive, right, an idea like we can compare these two things and tell without error who did the crime, or in these kinds of cases, we can look at the medical findings of the child and be sure that what happened was a homicide. And then if you want to save kids, it becomes so easy just keep them away from bad people who will

hurt them. And that's a much less complicated answer to a world in which kids can be hurt by disease or congenital illness, or falling down the stairs or falling out of their playpens. Okay, So, Amanda, if you could take us through this time period, this ten o'clock till the ambulance arrived, and what started off as a very normal average night with the child that seemed to be behaving normally after this fall, if you could just take us through the sequence of events, because I think people

and really learn something from this. That night, Heather and I had taken all of the kids, meaning my children as well as her too, and we gone to Chick fil A. The kids played eight I stopped for ice cream for all the kids. Once we got back to my house, all the kids played, we could, did baths and all that good stuff, and the inn bedtime. Heather and I sat in the living room just chit chatting like normal, and Olivia was still up. Around ten ten thirty, Heather had set the pack and play up and I

laid Olivia down so she could go to sleep. Shortly after that, probably round eleven, Heather went home because she had to work the next day. After she left, I was just watching TV. I had to get up to use the bathroom, and whenever I came back around the corner, Olivia was on the side of the playpen, which she had tried several times before to climb out the playpen, but just hadn't actually climbed out yet. When I saw her, I just said her name quickly. I just said Olivia.

And when I did is when she went off of the side of the apen. When I came around the playpen, there was nothing to indicate that she had hit her head. She had looked to me like she had hit her butt, and that's where she had a small cut on her tongue. And Dad did it with a paper tawel to make

sure it was okay and checked her. She was fine, and then I let her down so she could play for a little while, and she played with some balls that we had in a little container there, and after some time she laid down the love seat beside me and went to sleep. After she had been a sleep for a little while, my then husband was on his way home and would call just to let me know that he was on his way, and I went to move Olivia into the playpen so that she could sleep,

and uh, something just didn't feel right. She just didn't feel right. After I got off the phone with him, once he came in the door, I knew something was wrong. Her breathing steamed shallow, so I had started CPR. He called one, and shortly after the first responder got there and began CPR himself, and the next thing I knew was being at the hospital and them saying that she

was pronounced stead at the hospital. This episode is underwritten by a i G, a leading global insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar of the A i G pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice.

Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. So doctors examined Olivia and determined that she died of a skull fracture and her brain bleed. However, a medical examiner also opined incorrectly that the injuries were

not consistent with a playpen fall. Right, so we know that in cases of accidental death of a child, the authorities default is to say that there was abuse, and as Kate pointed out, they typically attributed to the last person who was around the child. That part would be logical if there was actual abuse, but of course in this case it was an accident, and you were the

last person known to be with the baby. The case on top of all the other problems due national tension because of the fact that you had a father who was by now a famous actor, right, And we know

that has a big impact as well. When the media gets involved, it wraps up the messure and it also creates an environment in which it's less likely that you'll get a fair trial because it's hard to be an impartial juror when you've been reading that this woman as a monster who killed this baby, right, especially a small town with a famous father. But the fact is you weren't arrested for quite some time, right, right, It was

approximately six months later. Olivia passed in October two and it was May of two nine, and by now, of course it may have two thousand nine who were charged with first degree murder, among other things. So now let's go to trial. Orange Ossio. A chief medical examner, jan Garavalia, determined that Olivia's death was a homicide based on the autopsy. She found a three and a half inch fraction on Olivia's skull, obleedient swelling in her brain, hemorrhaging behind her eyes,

and cuts on her tongue. Now, at trial, Garvelia and another expert testified that the skull fracture was quote inconsistent with an accident ental fall, and could only be caused by a car accident or being slammed against a wall,

proving that Olivia was abused end quote. The state also claimed, and this is bananas, that Olivia was too young to climb out of her playpen, as if there's an exact age when kids can climb out of her playpen, right, Kate tell us some of the other things that went wrong here at this critical critical stage, Well, there were a couple of things about Amanda's case and about Olivia's

death that really complicate the picture. One of the things that we were very concerned about when we looked at her case on post conviction was that the medical examiner did not preserve, as far as we could ever discover a piece of the bone the fracture itself, So there was no way to look at the fracture itself to tell how old it was. And that's important because Amanda had been nowhere near Olivia for the weeks leading up

to her death. She was visiting her dad, she was out of the state, So it was really important to know how old this fracture was. And the reasons that we had to believe that it was older was that upon careful inspection of the tissues that were preserved from autopsy that were above and below the fracture, those appeared to have blood protinaceous material in them that was older. So it indicated that there could have been some older injury there, and that made it very likely that the

fracture was an older fracture. And that's important because a child can, and you know, it doesn't happen very often, but a child can be critically injured or die from a fall like that, from a fall out of a playpin onto a hard floor, but a delicate child, a child with an injury, is more likely to be seriously injured in that kind of a fall. It makes more sense that someone who's already hurt would re injure their

existing injury, So that was really problematic. It was also really problematic the way that they tried to place the blame upon Amanda. So the story that the state told at trial to accused her was really internally inconsistent. The timeline was very fuzzy. They said all sorts of things that weren't borne out by the physical evidence. I'll give you one example. After Olivia had her fall, Amanda sat up with her for a little while, and, you know, as you might do with a child who's upset, let

her play, gave her a snack. She had banana and some fruit snacks, and those were found in her stomach at autopsy. So there's pretty clear physical evidence corroborating what Amanda said. And yet at the trial, doctors testified that Amanda couldn't have been telling the truth because Olivia had a cut on her tongue that would have prevented her

from eat. But that doesn't make any sense. We had in controvertible physical evidence that she indeed eight, but instead the subjective speculation of the medical examiner seemed to sort of trump that objective evidence and that testimony. It's going to hit hard with a jury because why would they doubt what this guy that's very learned and educated person

is saying. Right, one would need to see evidence to the contrary in order to have any degree of healthy skepticism, even though we know that the standard is supposed to be beyond a reasonable doubt. But that's not the way it works in courtrooms unfortunately, especially in cases like this, is really guilty until proven innocent, and that takes us to the defense. Was there any defense expert presented anything to counter this false narrative that the medical examiner was

putting out there? There were two defense experts that were in it at the time. My experts had information to the effect, for example, the videos showing other children of similar age climbing out of play pens and cribs and such, of the old injury and what happens with when that iron starts to build up, and how that indicates that it's an old injury and had to have at least been I be least seventy two hours of healing that

had already started. There was a lot of evidence that was critical to my case that my experts were not allowed to discuss because it had not been disclosed to the prosecution prior to the trial date. Their entire testimony wasn't even allowed. Oh so that's a big mistake on your defense team side. They had the evidence but couldn't present it because they had either forgotten or just botched it right. Well, my attorney has changed so many times

through the public defender's office. My initial attorney had moved to another state, and then someone else came on, and then the very last attorney was added about ten days prior to trial, maybe forteen days before trial. Wow, how long was the trial? Four days? Four days for a

first degree murder case? And there was even a comment made on the first day of trial that they were sure they could get it wrapped up by the weekend because it was Memorial Day weekend and the prosecutor had plans for Memorial Day weekend, right, And I'm sure the inference there was a new jury members probably want to get home too, You probably have some great stuff going on. Yeah, that doesn't sit very well. So okay, four day trial,

everyone's trying to get home for Memorial Day. You're facing a charge of continue to prison for the rest of your life for claim that you know and everybody should have known you didn't commit, and the jury goes out. What were you thinking at this time? I still had this belief in this system that my entire life I had believed worked. I went in there knowing that I was going home because innocent people don't go to person. And when they said not guilty on the first two counts.

I was like, finally, and then they say guilty on the third count, which was manslaughter. My entire world crumbled right then because what I knew is a working system failed, not just me, but my children. Right then, I mean, all I'm thinking is who's gonna raise my daughters? What's going to happen? Now you just fall to the deepest pit of despair. There's no one who can hear you at that point. It's just a lonely dark place. They took me too Low Correctional which is in Ocala, Florida.

It's a maximum security women's facility. And of course other than this, I've never been in trouble, arrested anything. So I'm going into one of the worst women's prisons in Florida and was there maybe two weeks and was placed into protective because to be because someone tried to extort money from my family because it was a high profile case. And then they sent me all the way to Homestead, which is basically the end of Florida because of liability reasons.

They didn't want me close to where family and the situations could all be close to the facility. So now you're far away from your family. Did you have opportunities to get visits while you were there? I did. In the beginning. My daughters went to stay with my mom because that was just the safest place for them to be at the time, and for about the first year she was good to bring them, and after that she just kind of used that situation to push me out and take them under her own wing. So then I

was isolated for my children too. So for those first couple of years, it was nothing but crying in sadness and just loneliness. And on my second year, I just decided that I wasn't going to allow an injustice to completely strip me of who I was, and so I just turned it all around. I started taking college classes, I started into culinary arts, some exercising and doing things that would better myself in my mind and keep me sharp.

So good that you did, too, because you had a lot of work to do, and I think it's safe to say you wouldn't be here today if not for the fact that you did find that extra gear. Right, So you originally denied a new trial. Right direct appeals concluded in late two thousand thirteen, and the court didn't

even have anything else to say. No additional comments. But then in two thousand and fifteen, the Innisis Project of Florida, and of course the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences Welson on the c i f S took on representation for you. Did you at this point started to see the light at the end of the tunnel? I did, And it couldn't have been at a better time, because I had hit a point that I was just done.

It was so hopeless, and I was right on the verge of giving up, and then the Inniscence Project showed up and it was like everything started to turn around right at that moment. Right, So, hey, how did you get involved? As many villains as they're on this case or a number of heroes as well, and you're one of them. So tell us what happened back then take

us through it. So Amanda's case came to me when I was still working at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and she had a team of people who believed in her innocence, who wanted to see her get exonerated. And one of those was actually Dr John Plunkett, one of the experts who testified at her trial. He was so

troubled by this case. He was very upset about the way that things had gone, and so I started to hear about her case from a number of different folks um and as I dug more into it, it was so clear that it was so similar to the other cases that I had done with innocent clients who'd been wrongfully convicted with very similar facts, And so I knew that we would need a team that included local council in Florida and the best person I can think of

there with Steth Miller at the Innocence Project of Florida. So I called him up and we agreed to work on this case together. She had appending deadline, so we

actually had to pull it together fairly quickly. Amanda had some family members who were very devoted to her innocence who actually drove from Indiana to my office where I was working in Wisconsin with boxes and boxes of discovery and files and spent probably two days in my office scanning everything in And so we started working on basically this big brief, and we filed at the beginning of two thousand fifteen, and some of the things in the

emotion scientific and medical expert witness opinions were cited that proved that short distance falls like the one that little Olivia took from the playpen, can cause serious injury and death, and had led the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to warn about the potentially lethal danger of short distance falls

from playpens, shopping carts, child seats, and high chairs. They also presented evidence demonstrating that the States claimed that Olivia was too young to climb out of her playpen was patently false. They presented a two thousand eleven study examining the injuries associated with cribs, playpens, and bassonets of a hundred and eighty one thousand, six fifty four children younger than two years old. So this is like boom right. Yeah.

What that study showed is that children fall out of playpens and cribs relatively frequently, and they relatively frequently do it on their own. So fast forward now to two thousand and twenty, when Amanda was granted an evidential hearing, they could have led to a new trial, right, but within days of the hearing that was planned for early September, the state prosecutors came along and offered you a deal, Amanda. Right.

They said that if you stopped pressing your innocence in court that you could go home immediately rather than roll the dice, I guess, because even if the conviction was overturned at the new trial, you could still faced an additional twenty years if you've been convicted again. Of course, who knows what they could have convicted you up. So how did you feel at this point? I mean, here

you were. Now you've got the fantastic representation, people who not only really believe with you, but are eminently qualified and had actually done exactly what they set out to do, which is proven that you were as innocent as you always said that you were. And now here comes this Sophie's choice. Really, right, after a certain amount of time that I had been incarcerated, I actually became a law

clerk and started helping others on their cases. And after time and time again of seeing just how badly the system would railroad people, I just lost all faith in justice period. So I just came to a point where it's like, what do I do here? And at that point my family needed me more than I needed to keep the fight going and risk still not being able to be there for them because it was no longer

about right or wrong. It was all about making sure that I was doing what was right for family, even if it meant that I had to just accept the deal and go home. It's not hard for me to understand why you did what you did, even as hard as it must have been. So now you're free, And how has it been now that you've been free and home for a year. I have been incredibly blessed because I have an amazing husband, I have an amazing support system, so I didn't require a lot of external resources to

get back on my feet. If it wasn't for that, I don't know how well I could have fared well. Amanda. All I can say is you are a hero to me and so many other people hearing your story. Now we have what I always say is my favorite part of the show. This is the part of the show that I think our listeners have come to expect them look forward to as well, which is called closing arguments.

And closing arguments works like this. I thank you both again, Kate Judson and Amanda Brumfield for being here and taking your time out to share this very very important story. And then I'm going to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on and just listen. Kate. I'll due respect to you, but we're

gonna say the best for last, and that's Amanda. She's the star, and we're going to let you share whatever else you want to share with our audience and with me, and then you can just pass the mic off to Amanda, and that's how we'll close out the show. Well, one of the things that I haven't gotten a chance to do yet is saying Amanda's praises. Amanda's story getting out there is I'm sure going to help others, But Amanda

has already helped others. When she was inside the walls and she was helping in the law library as a law clerk, I know that she was helping other women with their cases, and in fact, she was a big part of why another one of our clients came to us and was also freed right around the same time. And so I know that Amanda has directly helped lots more people than I know about. But I can point to at least one person who's free today in part

because of her advocacy. And I'm just so impressed by what she's been able to do since she's been out. I know not from personal experience, but from talking to other folks who have been released, how very, very hard it is. But she's handling it with such strength and grace, and I am so impressed. And what I would also like people to know is that there are still accusations being made under this same paradigm, under the same hypothesis,

and they're happening all the time. And while it's true that children are abused, and that children can be seriously injured or killed because of abuse, it's also true that abuse can be misdiagnosed with absolutely tragic consequences. No tragic because an innocent person can go to prison like happened

to Amanda. An innocent person can end up on death row, as has happened to um some of the other folks on Who's Behalf we advocate, And even if someone doesn't go to prison, it can tear families apart as it works its way through both the criminal justice system and

the child custody system. The other thing is that if a child is ill and their misdiagnosed as haven't been abused, they don't get the treatment for their illness that they should get, or it's delayed, and so it's critically important that we re examine the way we look at these cases and the incredible power that we allow a small

collection of doctors to have over people's lives. Amanda, First, I just want to say I'm incredibly humbled and grateful to even have the opportunity to get this word out and to be a part of something as big as an innocence movement like this. My biggest hope is that people will start to pay attention and not just allow media to determine how they see someone. That's how a lot of wrongful convictions happened. We don't use our own intuition, in our own minds to see what is real and

what it's not. Instead, we're just quick to convict in our own minds and our own hearts, not knowing the circumstances or the facts, and just believing in theatrics and oh well, it must be right because it was on the news. We have to stand on our own feet and we have to listen. If it was not for the Innocence Project, if it wasn't for Kate, if it

wasn't for Seth Melissa. In the beginning, Christa, everyone every step of the way worked so hard to get me home, and as much as it pained me to have to accept a plea, at the same time, we still one because now I can be out here and help someone else to not end up in this same situation, and I can be a voice for somebody who may not

have one. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wards, with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at

Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flop ralevul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one