I'm so grateful that many of our guests have been released from prison, either before or after our coverage was released, but others continued to languish behind bars for crimes they didn't commit, including the man whose case we're going to highlight again today, John Jones. The Ohio Innis's Project is still hard at work to set him free, and this is his story of how a grieving father's loss was
compounded by his wrongful conviction. John Jones and Deja Ruiz had three children while working on their high school diplomas. After celebrating Deja's mother's birthday on March eighteenth, twenty ten, the young family laid down to sleep. Despite the expected waking and feeding that comes with six month old twins, the night was ordinary. When Deja left for school at eight am, John propped some bottles on a blanket near
twins Jada and Jasmine and went back to sleep. Then, when John woke again at nine forty am, turned on cartoons for his son and went to attend to the twins. Jada was unresponsive. In a panic. He called family and nine one one. The dispatcher coached him through CPR until first responders arrived and took over. He did everything a concerned father would do, but when testing was done at the hospital, doctors found what they mistakenly thought was conclusive
evidence of lethal child abuse. However, over the next decade, the science that they used to support John's conviction has crumbled under the weight of reality. Had a jury heard all the other now logical explanations for the symptoms present in little Jada's body, John Jones never would have served a day of his fifteen to life prison sentence. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason.
That's me, of course, your host, and today we're here to tell you the heartbreaking story of John Jones, who was just seventeen years old when his six month old daughter, Jada Ruiz died, and shortly thereafter, the tragedy was compounded by the hubris of some in the medical establishment and legal system armed with the junk science of shaking baby syndrome. And today I'm joined by a phenomenal co host. Avid listeners will remember Greg glod from the Junk Science episode
on roadside drug Testing. He is the criminal Justice fellow at Americans for Prosperity. Greg. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
I appreciate it. Jason, thank you so much for allowing me to co host. You and I have gotten close over the last couple of months. I've been working on criminal Justice Reformed since about twenty fifteen now, and to be able to do this today and co host, is you know, really an honor? So no, I really thank you again.
Well, I'm the one who really should feel honored, and not just because you've joined us, but also because with us is one of the world's lead experts in one of the most troubling aspects of our criminal legal system, shaken Baby syndrome. Now she was also featured on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science when we covered this subject. The executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, Kate Judson, Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Hi, thank you so much, Jason, and Hi Greg.
And last but not least, we have with us staff attorney at the Ohio Innocence Project, the man who's representing John Jones, Donald Caster. Donald, Welcome to Wroneful Conviction. Thanks for being here.
Hi, Jason, thank you for having me on.
And we'll be joined very soon by John Jones. Was going to be calling in from Lebanon Correctional Facility in Ohio. But first let's get a little background on what John was up against when Jada became unresponsive.
Kate, can you give a brief history on shaken baby syndrome? You know where it came from, this hypothesis, and then how did it start to enter its way into the criminal justice system as a viable scientific theory to convict caretakers of murder, Sure.
Greg, Shakin baby syndrome was originally proposed as a hypothesis to explain a phenomenon that a pediatric neurosurgeon in Great Britain was seeing in his patients. He would sometimes have infants who died or were seriously ill without a clear cause and without external trauma, and yet the internal features looked a lot like kids who had suffered some kind
of traumatic injury. So those findings were subdural hematoma, which is bleeding between the coverings of the brain, retinal hemorrhage which is bleeding at the back of the eye, and encephalopathy and cerebral edema, which sort of acts together as one leg of what sometimes people call the triad. Ceribril edema is brain swelling and encephalopathy is brain dysfunction. And so doctor Guthkelch, the pediatric neurosurgeon, was seeing these findings in kids and they looked injured on the inside but
not on the outside. And he thought that one reason for that might be a common disciplinary technique in his home Northern England in the seventies, which was shaking. And so what doctor goth Kelch said is that these medical findings could be due to shaking. And doctor goth Kelch wasn't claiming to have the answers, but rather that he was hypothesizing about what might be causing these findings. So
that started to evolve. A radiologist in New York, John Caffey, built on that and he published articles saying the same thing, right, that parents should be gentle with infants. But neither of these doctors suggested that the medical findings that they associated with shaking were exclusively diagnostic to shaking, nor did they say that there was a reliable way to place blame on a caregiver when a child had these medical.
Findings, right, and so where was the switch then, from this just being you know, a hypothesist or an unexplained phenomena to a verifiable medical diagnosis that actually began convicting visuals of murder of a child.
And there's a little bit of a gap in understanding between the mid to late nine seventies and then when we start to see these cases appear in published appellate decisions in the late eighties, and we started to see prosecutors and pediatricians in particular, also pathologists saying that when children had this collection of findings, which is sometimes called a triad of findings or a constellation of medical findings,
that shaking could be diagnosed. And that's when it comes into the criminal legal system and we start to see the trajectory that we're on today where parents are wrongfully accused based on only the existence of a particular set of medical findings. And I mean to be totally clear, there's no debate about whether abusive shaking, violent shaking of an infant is dangerous. It is and no one should
do it. The debate is really whether shaking reliably explains the findings that are often attributed to it, whether shaking can be diagnosed as the cause of those findings.
Kate, and doing my research for this, there is a large concentration of these shaken baby syndrome cases in the state of Ohio. And so I just wanted to see if you had any explanation behind why Ohio kind of had a higher rate of shaking baby syndrome cases than many other jurisdictions across the nation.
Researchers aren't one hundred percent sure why some places have higher concentrations of diagnoses of SBS than others. It's probably
a combination of factors. But some of those factors include prosecutors who are particularly aggressive in going after these are kinds of accusations, the media attention certain cases receive in certain media markets, and the child abuse pediatricians or forensic pathologists who work on these cases, if they have a particular belief or bent, then there are more likely to be more accusations of shaking within that person's jurisdiction or area of control. And Ohio is one of those places.
And now we'll go to Lebanon Correctional Facility to speak with a young man who was doing his best as a young teenager to raise three kids while finishing high school in the third largest shaken babyies syndrome epicenter in the country, Akron, Ohio.
Hello, this is a prepaid debit call.
From an inmate. It's Elebanon correctional facility to accept this call.
Press zero to prevent.
This call is from a correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording.
Thank you for using GTL. Hello John, Yeah this job John. Like I always say, I'm glad you're here with us, but I'm sorry because of the reason you're here, or more to the point, because of where you are.
Thanks for having me.
So I wanted you to take us back, if you will, to your life before this absolute horror happened. You were growing up in Akron.
I grew up with four sisters who struggled.
I grew up poor. He moved around a lot.
My mom has some struggles strugg edition alcohol addiction. My father as well had the same struggles. Regardless of what she was going through her own personal problems. My mom always was around, she was always with us. But my grandmother end up getting customery of me.
When I was real young. She just put us on a path to try to be as successful as we could. Growing love.
I did real good at school, always was like an honor roll student. Once I became a teenager, and that's when I came.
Into contact with my child's mother.
I met her December sixteenth, my fourteenth birthday, and my son was can see nine days later.
On Christmas Eve, Christmas night.
So now on fourteen, I'm expecting a child on the way. I knew that I had.
A responsibility now, so school.
No longer was a priority. My did what I needed to do to provide for him.
As time progressed, me and her eventually began to establish a relationship get closer. A couple of years later, that's when my twins were can See.
Jada and jazz Man. We ended up getting an apartment together on our own.
My grandmother was still technically my legal guardian, so I lived with them, but I spent most.
Nights with my child's mother just to be around my children. Growing up.
My father was always in my life, but like I said, he was battling with addiction. Even though I loved him unconditionally, he just wasn't the best that he could have been.
So that it made me want to make sure I was the.
Best I could have been, regardless of how old I was, regardless of school, whatever I was going through, I was going to be present every single day in their life, no matter what, regardless of the status of me and their mother's relationship, how healthy or how unhealthy it was, I was going to make sure I was there for my kids no matter what.
And that's admirable. And so you, your children's mother, Desa, your son Tyshan, and the twins Jada and Jasmine all moved into an apartment together. Dajo was eighteen, you're seventeen, and you were both finishing high school through an alternative school for young parents, and somehow you're making it work. Which brings us to March nineteenth, twenty ten.
The night before that morning it was actually her mother's birthday.
Everybody spent some time together. It was a cool little vibe though. Everybody was on the same page.
And we went to sleep like any other day.
We slept down in the living room.
I slept on the couch, my daughter, Jaded and she slept down on the floor with my daughter, saying, and my son was down there with as well.
But throughout the night she.
Was waking me up, complaining about positioning or beating or you know, my daughter might have been hungry or whatever.
She was waking me up throughout the night.
But it was just a typical day, and then that morning she had a test that she had to go take.
Right and from what I understand, you both fed the twins at five am and then went back to sleep. Then Dasia woke up at seven am to get ready for school and left around eight.
So I get up, walking through the door, you know, wishing her look on her task, give her a kiss.
She go out.
At this point, my son's still asleep, my daughter's on the couch, they laying down. It's early in the morning, so I'm still tired.
I go up to my.
Daughter's I popped the bottles. I learned later on now that this wasn't a smart.
Thing to due just because of the safety.
Concerns with a notewarm, But time I really wasn't aware of it, and it was more like a convenient being away of me going back to sleep, but also feeding them if they were having So I placed the bottles up.
On the blanket and I'll prop them up so I'll put.
Them right there, and just so when they do wake up, the bottle be right there, they'll be able to feed. I can be able to sleep about another hour or to whatever. Anbr everybody be cool. We did this every day must.
Of a time, so it was just another I said, it was just another day.
But it's at this point, between eight and nine forty am that, according to the state's theory and what passed for expert testimony, that you allegedly abused your daughter Jada in such a way that it caused all of these supposed injuries or symptoms that were later observed at the hospital, the same ones that Kate had mentioned earlier that make
up the triad of shaking baby syndrome. But as we now know, there are a myriad of medical conditions that can and do cause these symptoms in addition to an accidental or intentional traumatic event, and even in those events, it's important to note that a child may be lucid up to seventy two hours or even more before the symptoms or injuries become a parent, and in this case, they became apparent to you when you checked on Jada and Jasmine at around nine forty am on that faithful,
awful day. And you know, as a father myself, it's every parent's worst nightmare. So at nine forty am you woke up, put on cartoons for Tyshon and go to check on your daughters, only to find that Jada was unresponsive.
That was the.
Scariest moment in my life. That was the worst day of my life. I didn't know what to do in that moment. She wasn't breathing, she wasn't moving, she wasn't responsor for at all. I instantly get on the phone. My first reaction was to call our family because my daughters were born with accid reflects.
They when they feed, they were regard to take the food. It would come up their most sometimes it would come up their mouth. It didn't happen every time, but it happened frequently.
So at first I was wondering if this was the case.
So I actually called my mom and I tell them what's going on.
But I'm panicking, so I didn't want to stay on the phone with them too long because.
I'm realizing she's not breathing or nothing. But I called her family as well to let them know. I get off the phone. I called nine one one tell them the whole situation is. I'm listening to the nine one one operator.
She's explaining to me how to do the test confession and the mouth to mouth. I tried. I did everything I could.
Nothing was working like so at this point, I'm becoming more scared, more upset. I'm crying, and I'm just waiting seem like a second favers. They finally arrived, They grab her, they take her out, and I begin to speak to the detectives or whatever.
I'm telling them everything pretty much that I'm telling.
You, this my recolation of that night.
In the morning, nothing really stood out telling me. From that point, family members started rising.
Everybody's fron sign.
We all head down to the hospital, and then a couple hours later, that's when we.
Hear the doctor's opinion about what they believed was the cause of everything.
When the first responders arrived then see any signs of any external injuries. They didn't see any bruising or obvious deformities or bone fractures. They were under the impression that Jada might have suffered from SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome. And the police see John doing what you would expect a distraught father to be doing. It's an officer named Dennis Bard starts taking pictures of the scene. There are
blankets that are collected. One of the things that's not collected is the bottles that were feeding two of the children.
And that becomes critical later on in the state's theory of the case.
The bottles are important, at least according to the state, because one of the doctors who testified on behalf of the state told the jury that how much milk and formula was in the bottle would have been really important in establishing the timing of abuse, because, according to the state's doctor, Jada wouldn't have been able to consume anything from the bottle after suffering the type of injuries that they Jada had suffered.
And what we now know, and this is so important, is that a child can experience seventy two hours or more of lucidity after a traumatic event, whether accidental or intentional, which it's not entirely clear that this is in fact what happened to cause these symptoms. And I say symptoms because a myriad of medical conditions can cause what happened to Jada to happen. But we're getting a little bit
of ahead of ourselves here. So the first responders see this situation as a non criminal death, not a homicide. So the bottle was just left there and the lead investigator, Detective Shady, drove John to.
The hospital, Detective Shady also does a very brief interview of John at the time. Detective Shady and John go to the hospital following the ambulance, and once they get to the hospital, they find out that Jada had been successfully resuscitated. John makes phone calls to family members to let them know that things were at least looking a little bit better now that they were at the hospital, and then doctors at the hospital start to do medical tests.
They do a cat scan, other tests, and again, ultimately the doctors began to believe that there were actual injuries to Jada, and in fact, once they got to the hospital, John was confronted by a doctor who who did not testify a trial, but a significant to the case, a doctor Darryl Steiner, who came in and told John and the detective that Jada had suffered from what he called
non accidental injuries. The hospital staff also claimed that there were old injuries, insinuating that abuse had taken place for a significant period of time.
So, John, you had just been through one of the most harrowing experiences that anyone can ever go through, and you were waiting to hear what the path forward might be for your daughter and the doctors at Aquan Children's Hospital, again the number three epicenter for shaking baby syndrome diagnoses
and prosecutions in the country. Those doctors tell you the family and detectives their opinion that the medical facts observed in Jata retinal bleeding, subdual bleeding and brain swelling, as well as a series of fractures, that these could only have been the result of a non accidental traumatic event, in other words, child abuse, violent shaking by Jada's caretaker
at the time that she went unresponsive. And again, we now know that there are a slew of medical conditions that can cause these symptoms, and that children can experience seventy two hours or more of relatively normal behavior after such a traumatic event, if a traumatic event even ever occurred and was in fact what caused these symptoms. So back then many in the medical establishment, these doctors thought that they could diagnose a crime and the time of
that crime, which we now know that they could not. Meanwhile, your story has remained consistent ever since that faithful day, and nowhere in your recollection of events does even a minor frustration occur, let alone violence shaking.
Never, never, never, We all sitting in the weiting room or in the area when they come in and they tell us, well, we believe that what's wrong with her was my accident and was intentional, was caused by somebody, was caused by specifically somebody who was there.
So then at that point I felt like I was.
Being accused or even suspected of something.
And the only other person that was there with me was their mother.
I know I did do nothing to her. I never will so a man. Things running through my head at that moment.
I'm scared first and foremost most completely for my daughter. Now I'm questioning it, like why are they saying somebody did this? Why they say somebody causes like like did she do something? So a conversation was had afterward outside with just.
Me and her, and you know, I asked her straight up, like did she do something?
And she did not.
You know, I didn't do nothing. I don't know what they're talking about. Like, so now now I'm just confused, like I just don't know what.
I don't know.
But they take this, continue to question me, they keep talking to me. My natural reaction was to corrop grad with them. You know what I'm saying, it's my baby so however, I can help whatever I can say, But at the end of the day, I don't know much.
I don't know what to say.
I'm confused like anybody else, everybody else, I don't know what happened much.
The finger was actually pointed and blame was cast and charges were brought apart me in indictments and hand cushy place on me not. That's when I started feeling like their antentions wasn't in the right place, because if they truly was, then you would have really saw out a real answer instead of just placed it on.
Somebody shifted because they were physically and.
The wrong.
This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Porton and Garrison, a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice area. So with misplaced conference, they attribute injuries or symptoms to actions and persons when the science barely
even supported it back then, let alone now. The causes of Jada's symptoms range from accidental or intentional drama to internal For instance, there's a well recognized condition where there's a little extra space in between the child's brain and skull wretches the veins that bridge that space, which causes
chronic subdural bleeding. It still hasn't been determined what causes this overlying condition, but birth trauma has been suggested as a potential cause, whether natural or cesarian, and this condition usually manifests within the child second to six months. Jada, of course, was six months old when this occurred, and it's logical to think that being birthed as a twin could probably be described as a traumatic event, an event
that could cause limb fractures as well. In these shaken baby syndrome cases, CT scans and MRIs will usually show the chronic subdural bleeding as they found in this case, which will then be used as evidence of repeated abuse. Well, it's misused, but used anyway, when all along there's a legitimate and logical medical explanation. Other potential causes for symptoms like Jada's. I mean, you could write a medical textbook
on this right. They include bleeding disorderslogen disorders, copper disorders, genetic disorders, vitamin deficiencies, even your everyday average household slip and fall. But I seriously doubt whether the number three epicenter for diagnosing or misdiagnosing child abuse did a full genetic work up to rule out all of these potential causes before it just sort of cavalierly sending John up the river.
So the allegation was that Jada had a series of fractures and that perhaps those fractures were of different ages, and that, combined with the findings of bleeding and of brain swelling, were thought to indicate trauma, and specifically trauma from abuse.
So, unfortunately, one of the things that we know happens in wrongful conviction cases all the time is that once the police and in this case, doctors start to head in a certain direction, it begins to be very difficult for them to turn to a new path. And that's what happened here. The police and the doctors didn't look for any other causes. They seized on this diagnosis of shaking baby syndrome and that's where they went. It's one of the things that makes it harder for us to
successfully represent John. Not impossible. We think we'll be successful in this case ultimately, but it's one of the things that hampers our work some is that we don't have the medical records for Jada from Jada's birth up until
March nineteenth. And the reason is that they were never gathered by either the medical investigators or the law enforcement investigators to look at and to determine whether there was other symptomology, other pathology, other things going on with Jada prior to March nineteenth, instead of just the medical records from March nineteenth going forward.
Particularly with the SBS, we've seen over two hundred cases overturned. In a lot of these, you know, it seemed clear cut that there was abuse, and later on it was either some sort of minor accident or some sort of
genetic cause to this. And so, you know, I think people have this notion of what SBS is, and we see clearly that there's a lot of varying reasons for that to potentially see these findings within a child and then they're just you know, initially ignored, but then later come out later on when you have a full examination or full medical history.
Well, and there's a lot of overlap here, greg because a lot of the factors that caused children to have either have health problems or have their health problems not be appropriately diagnosed or treated, are also the factors that doctors and child protection workers will look at to say that statistically, a child is more likely to be abused. And so what I mean by that is parents who are young and parents who are people of color are both more likely to be accused of crimes and more
likely to receive disparate treatment within the medical establishment. So those things actually work together to create an unjust result in many cases.
Yeah, and it's worth noting that just as we record, a study was just published which showed that there is intense cognitive bias amongst medical examiners, so much so that when given the same exact evidence, two different groups and we're talking large groups of medical examiners look at exactly the same evidence of a three year old that was brought to the hospital with head trauma and died were four times more likely to rule it a homicide when they were told that the child was black and that
the child was brought in by the boyfriend of the mother, as opposed to the other group that was told with exactly the same evidence that the child was white and was brought in by a grandparent. So just to really put a stamp on what you were saying, Kate, So let's turn to the arrest.
So John was not arrested right away, although it was clear that once Jada was taken off of life support and passed away, that they were going to charge him with murder. John didn't have a lot of money as a teenager charged with a crime. He had council appointed to represent him, and then council got the court to provide some funds for an additional expert witness to help prepare for trial.
So at trial, what was the state's theory, what was the evidence behind that, and then what did the defense put together to refute.
So Deja agreed with everything that John had said previously about what happened in the hour or so before Deja left for school that day, So there was no inconsistency between what John's been saying and what Deja said happened. Deja, of course, claimed that she didn't do anything to any of the children. According to her testimony at trial, she believed John may have lied to her about any wrongdoing, but das's being told by the people who were supposed
to know what they're talking about. The John killed her child and Kate.
What were the medical findings that the state witnesses had and what they concluded.
The medical facts presented at trial in this case included a series of fractures, mostly fresh but at least one older fracture, retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hemorrhaging, signs of previous subdural hemorrhaging, and brain swelling. As I said before, this is the classic triad of shaken baby syndrome. Then the state put on three medical witnesses. Doctor Paul McPherson testified that the child would not have been able to suck any milk
after sustaining these kinds of injuries. But we now know that a child can experience seventy two hours of lucidity after the injuries associated with shaken baby syndrome, and that's what published case reports have shown us. It could be even greater than that. So doctor macpherson conceded that the injuries may have been sustained before John woke at eight am to give Jada a bottle. The injuries may not have been apparent, and the state had to seal up
that concession. With doctor Paul Besunder, who testified that the causal injury could not have been sustained prior to eight am. Again, we now know that a child can experience seventy two hours of lucidity or more after the injuries associated with us. Their last medical witnesses testimony was based on the testimony of Detective Shady, who said that John told him in an unrecorded interview that Jada began to suck the bottle when he made it available by propping it on the
blanket nearby. This is refuted by two other recorded interviews with John, as well as Deja's uncontested statement that Jada had drunk half her bottle before Dasa left for school. So you can see that the state was trying to box the cause of Jada's death into the window that
Jada was under John's care alone. Summit County Coroner doctor Lisa Kohler testified that, based on the secondhand information that the child drank a significant portion of the milk after eight am, the injuries were a result of being shaken, because if she could still muster the energy to drink milk after eight am, then the trauma must have been committed by John to cause her to go unconscious. However, and I know that I sound like a broken record here.
If there was causal trauma, it could have happened seventy two hours into the past from when Jada became unresponsive.
So the state's case was completely undermined by what we now know about the junk science that they were relying on to convict John. The defense, however, called renowned forensic pathologist doctor John Arden, who agreed that these could have been injuries from abuse or not, and that they could
have occurred between seven and nine forty five am. However, the evidence available did not permit a medical opinion with any degree of specificity regarding the timing of any of the fresh injuries, and that it is not medically reasonable to make any such determinations. Subdural hemorrhaging does not typically cause immediate incapacitation, So the way the state was trying to fence in this crime to that eight to nine
forty am window just doesn't hold water. Doctor Arden testified that Jada's medical records corroborate John's telling of events to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.
And doctor Arden, isn't you know, I'll say for lack of a better term, one of these defense witness gun for hire that'll kind of say, you know what he wants. I mean, he was a believer of SBS for a very long time, and he's mentioned very recent like you said, in more recent studies that doctors need to be very mindful of diagnosing this and they're really missing key facts. And Kate, you mentioned it, and I'll ask the tough question. I mean, you have fractures and limbs at least diagnosed
by state's witnesses and other things at trial. Were there any explanations about where potentially these injuries may have come because you know, I think you're on a jury, you're seeing you know, multiple fractures and damage to the head and then also to the extremities.
What is important to know about medical findings in these kinds of cases is that medical findings might look like abuse, but they might not necessarily be abused. And that can happen for a few reasons. One is that injuries that are accidental can be misinterpreted by medical providers and investigators as a b and another is related to this assumption that sometimes medical providers make that because they don't know
about the child's underlying medical conditions. If the child doesn't have any, so maybe a child has a bone disorder, they might fracture very easily. The classic example of this is little babies in a neonatal intensive care unit who are born, for example, very premature, and they can experience fractures with totally normal handling, changing their diaper, things like that. But that's not the only scenario in which children can have what appear to be really serious injuries from little
or no trauma. And because we don't know enough about Jada's medical condition, it's really hard for us to know what kind of actions were required for her to sustain the injuries that she had.
So after the presentation of dueling experts, the defense called John to the stand, who said what you've already heard here, that he did not hurt those children. Ever, that he did not see Jada drink from the bottle after eight am, but simply propped up a half full bottle on a blanket,
consistent with Daja's uncontested statement. And again, all this fucking nonsense about the bottle is completely irrelevant because current science supports that in the case of a traumatic event, it could have happened anytime over the prior three days or even longer. So, whether it was intentional or an accident, Jada could have fallen off the couch the changing table.
Knowing what we know now, one cannot maintain that those injuries could have only happened one way, the way that the state maintains still maintains violent shaking while Jada was alone in John's care. And that's if the cause even was a traumatic event rather than a pre existing medical condition. And like I've already mentioned here, there are and we've counted them. There are eighty eight potential conditions that we
know of so far, and the research is ongoing. Now, I want to quote the man that first hypothesized shaken baby syndrome back in the nineteen seventies, doctor Norman Guthkelch. We mentioned him earlier, and he wrote an article in twenty twelve. I'll never forget this that it was titled after forty years of Consideration, and that article was harshly critical of his very own hypothesis and everything that has
happened since. And so in a twenty twelve interview, doctor Guthkelch said, and I quote, I think we need to go back to the drawing board and make a more thorough assessment of these fatal cases. And I'm going to bet that we are going to find in every or at least the large majority of cases, that the child had another severe illness of some sort which was missed until too late. End the quote. I mean that's the man himself. But unfortunately that was twenty twelve and trial
was in twenty eleven. So after hearing the state's witnesses up against John's witness and not knowing really a fraction of what we know now, John was convicted almost predictably and sentenced to fifteen years to life. John, can you take us back to that terrible moment when the jury came back in.
I stand up, I'm listening to the verdict on Ka one. Kyle one was the highest degree of murder charts.
We finally defended.
Johnsones not guilty.
I actually turned back to my family and that the whole sense and feeling of relief just come over me, and I'm just like, finally, like everything just all the way, everything just went away.
I'm still agreeving with the loss of my daughter, but like the stress.
And the worry of the jail situation and all of this, it just went away.
Because I heard the words not guilty, not knowing.
That they got the whole rest of the indictment to read. So how too murder as a result of fluxus saw that we find.
That defending don zounds guilty.
It's just like all the life in my body.
Just let Initially with his tears, it was just like I can't even explain the feeling, like I look at my.
Mind, she crying, my sister, everybody crying, even.
My bang mind she crying. At that moment, I just knew life.
You know, it's about to be the longest, hardest part in my life.
And they said me to fifteen years of life.
I'm in here with grown men, I'm fresh eighteen. I'm here with convictive killers. I'm in here with people serve all types of different type of crimes. And I gotta survive. I started trying to educate myself.
I got my ged I just.
Got to survive.
I'm here now, so I gotta try to do everything I can to grow and prosper the best that I can.
I've seen a lot of hair, I learned a lot of here. I grew up.
I found myself in here, I was a kid when I came in. I'm almost twenty nine hours, learned a lot of air, all another person perspective, my mentality, my outlook on life, everything is different.
Don What is being done now for this young man? Is there any other exculpatory evidence that we haven't already outlined here, or any evidence that the state hid constitutional violations?
In terms of constitutional violations, a defendant has a right not to be convicted on the basis of unreliable, quasi scientific evidence. And that's what happened in John's case, and that's what happens in these so called shaken Baby syndrome prosecutions around the country, and particularly in Ohio, and even more particularly in Summit County, which is where Akron is. As Kate pointed out near the beginning today, Ohio is a particular hotspot for these sorts of cases, and not
just Ohio, but Summit County and Akron specifically. So either the people of Akron really like to use their children, or there's something going on at Acron Children's Hospital and in the Summit County Prosecutor's office with respect to their proclivity for jumping to the conclusion of child abuse. And bringing these types of cases. We are preparing to bring
post conviction litigation on John's path. We will argue that the science in this field has changed considerably over the last ten or eleven years, that if a jury could have heard in twenty ten what it could hear today, that a conviction simply wouldn't have happened.
So really, what you have here, and taking a step back, is you have a horrible tragedy. You have a conviction based upon science that, if it was tried today, would not be a viable theory, and you have a man still behind bars based upon that unreliable theory of shaking Babysitcrome correct.
Absolutely so for our listeners, I'm sure you're feeling the same outrage that I'm feeling now. And what can people do?
I certainly think that people can start writing letters to the parole board. John won't be eligible for parole until twenty twenty five, and hopefully by that time will have successfully completed litigation on his behalf in parole won't matter, But I certainly think that that people can start writing
to the parole board about these issues. Because John isn't the only person in Ohio who has to come before a parole board ultimately and convince the parole board that shaking baby syndrome just shouldn't serve as the underpinning for a conviction that keeps someone in prison for the rest of their lives. So that's something that people can do. The other thing I would say that people should do,
even apart from John's case, is be informed. If you get a jury duty summons, show up and then don't just believe what the government scientists tell you, think about it, decide whether or not what they're saying is credible and makes sense, and listen with open ears the experts that Defense Council puts on the stand as well.
And remember it's innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. So with that, John, we're thinking of you all the time, and we're going to do everything we can. You have an extraordinary team, not just on this call, but at the Ohio Innocence Project and throughout the innocence community. I encourage people to donate to the Ohio Innocence Project so that we can help John and so many others who have been wrongfully convicted in the state of Ohio.
So with that, now, of course it's the part of the show called closing arguments. First of all, I think our distinguished guests even we'll call it a panel today. First time I've ever used that word of closing arguments. So from Greg and I thanks again for being here. Greg, thank you for co hosting with me as well.
Thank you very much for allowing me to co host here. Jason.
Okay, and now we'll go to Donald and save Kate for last just because of alphabetical order, and then over to you John of course for the closing arguments.
Thank you Jason and Greg for having us on today and for talking about this really, really important issue and this important part of the criminal justice system that hasn't gotten enough attention recently. When I work with my clients who have been convicted of child abuse through this shaken Baby syndrome theory, and as I talk to their families,
I alternate between sadness and anger. I'm angry, as is everybody in the podcast today, that people go to prison over cases that looked like this, and I'm sad because of what it does to people and their families. John went to prison when he was teenager, and if the state of Ohiouse has its way he'll never get out again for something that wasn't a crime. It was a crime that never happened. These cases are enormously difficult to undo. I compare these cases sometimes to like trying to poke
a hole through jello. It's easier to make a hole through a very solid object than it is through something that's weak and weekly it just closes up around the hole that you've just made, and trying to undo these shaken baby convictions can be exactly like that. We need to do better in our criminal justice system. We need to pay attention to the science. We need to make it a little bit easier to discover the evidence to
undo these convictions after they happen. In Ohio, for instance, we really need the ability to do discovery before we file an action so we can get things like Jada's medical records from birth up until five months, so that we can put together the full medical history that we need to do the work in this kind of case.
Okay, The prosecution of these types of cases are based on a laudable goal, and that's to protect children and protect the most vulnerable. Nobody wants child abuse, Nobody wants to see abuse at all. Unfortunately, what's happened is that doctors and other experts believe that in these cases they can do what's called err on the side of the child.
They can accuse someone of abuse when they're not sure or when all of the science doesn't unerringly point to the defendant, and you can't err on the side of the child in these kinds of cases. It's impossible. Any error is going to harm both the child who may be a victim and everyone else involved in the case.
And that's because when these cases are investigated improperly or charges are broad that are wrongful, that means that a child can be separated from a loving family, or that a grieving parent who's lost a child can be punished for something that they didn't do. And it also might mean that a child who is ill or who has had an accident might not get the right medical care for their illness. There's no way to err on the side of the child in these cases, and that's why
we have to be so careful. We cannot have convictions that are premised on science that is shaky or science that is ambiguous. Why the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences exists because everybody's right to justice and a fair result depends on a fair process and a fair trial, and you can't have that when there is testimony or opinion introduced at the trial that is overstated or just playing wrong.
And now of course over to you, John, I.
Just want to sign light on my situation.
I want people to realize what I'm going through. And I'm not even the only person going through this is possibly being accused of causing that there are children child science like something that's not even le g It's a lot of whole period and the whole theory and the whole concept of.
The saying big potentional. So I just want to shed light on that situation.
First and foremost, I know that it's going to get better.
I know that.
I know that. I know that because I know I deserve it. I know that the truth gonna come out.
I love my.
Daughter not conditionally. I love all my children. I have three children, including my daughter who goshed the way first of the people. I love them unconditionally, do anything.
For them, will give my life for them. I gotta continue to fight for my life.
I gotta continue to fight for my freedom, and I got to continue to fight for justice.
For my daughter, because at the end of the day, that's what it's truly about. When we find out the real cause of what happened with her.
That's gonna automatically vindicate me, that's automatically gonna rate me, But it's gonna also bring closer to my family, my child's mother's family, everybody.
You know what I'm saying, because it's gonna give.
Us the truth.
It's gonna let us know, it's gonna aswer the questions that we all got. But at the end of the day, it's about my daughter. It's about Jaden's like, it's all about Jaded for her. Yeah, I want my freedom, Yeah I desire my freedom, but knowing what happened with her, getting the closure that our families need, and then finally being able to get to a place where we can move forward.
Because I never really ever even been able to heal from me.
I never found clothes because not only did I suffer to one of the deepest losses that anybody on this earth.
Can suffer is losing a child.
Not only did our experience thing and have to deal with that, I gotta deal with sitting here every single day.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla 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 Flahm. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one