Prosecuters have charged parents and caretakers with shaking infants to death. But how valid is that diagnosis, and how reliable is the evidence behind it?

Court proceedings dragged on for 4 years

Fifteen years ago, Edmunds, then a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom, was convicted of reckless homicide in the 1995 shaking death of a neighbor couple’s infant daughter. She was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

When Anthony Richards, Jr., was born on an early Sunday morning in June, the only complications involved his family getting the cameras in focus to capture his arrival into the world. He was a healthy baby and his parents, Queenyona Boyd and Anthony Richards, Sr., couldn’t have been happier.

The dispute over shaken baby syndrome is a bitter civil war. On one side, doctors, lawyers and other experts say the diagnosis is key to winning convictions of people accused of the most horrible acts of child abuse. Opponents say the diagnosis is used too freely and that sometimes, innocent people go to prison.

New research on shaken baby syndrome could set Pamela Jacobazzi free

Michelle Weidner still has nightmares. She wants to talk about it — wants to get it out in the open and off of her mind. Above all, she’s hoping her story will enlighten others so that changes can be made and horrors averted for others.

The medical profession likes to dress up what it does as rigorous science. Doctors publish papers in fancy journals using fancy jargon and fancy statistics. Too often there is hardly any solid science supporting their impressive-sounding conclusions.

At 4 months, Noah Whitmer was an easy baby. Super tranquilo, remembers Trudy Eliana Muñoz Rueda, who took care of Noah at her home day care center in Fairfax County, Va. Rueda and Noah’s mother, Erin Whitmer, both noticed when he stopped taking his bottle well and napping as usual in the middle of his fifth month, in April 2009.

A WOMAN calls 911 to report that a baby in her care has gone limp. Rescue workers respond immediately, but the infant dies that night. Though there are no external injuries or witnesses to any abuse, a jury convicts the woman of shaking the baby to death.