Mississippi death row inmate Devin Allen Bennett is expected to appeal his 2003 conviction for his infant son’s death linked to shaken baby syndrome.
On Wednesday, the Mississippi Supreme Court unanimously allowed him to go to the Rankin County Circuit Court to seek post-conviction relief based on what the court considered newly discovered evidence: recently undermined expert testimony in a California case.
The evidence is laid out in a Sept. 14 letter from Bennett’s attorney Krissy Nobile from the state Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel. She wrote to the court about post-conviction relief granted for Jason Harley Moore, a California man who was convicted in 2014 for the death of his infant daughter from abusive head trauma, the updated term for shaken baby syndrome.
“Mr. Moore, like Devin Bennett, was accused of child abuse after he sought medical care for his child,” Nobile wrote. “In both cases, the child’s condition followed a short fall from a bed, which was the explanation both men provided, and which treating doctors rejected as insufficient to explain the child’s condition.”
In August 2000, Bennett was watching his son, Brandon, who Bennett said fell from a carseat and onto the floor, hitting his head and side, according to court records. The child initially appeared stable, his father said, but his breathing later changed and stopped. Bennett told local law enforcement he tried to wake up Brandon and then took him to a hospital. From there, Brandon was transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where he died.
Dr. Bonnie Woodall, the pediatrician working in the UMMC emergency room, evaluated Brandon’s injuries and ordered tests. She consulted the chairman of neurosurgery, Dr. Andrew Parent, who also examined the infant. They diagnosed the infant with shaken infant syndrome.
Both doctors testified as medical experts at Bennett’s 2003 trial. Prosecutors argued he shook Brandon and threw him on the ground, relying on shaken baby syndrome and the autopsy performed by the late pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, a
Hattiesburg dentist who billed himself as a bite mark expert.
Hayne and West have been involved in a number of cases that have been overturned, including other shaken baby syndrome cases and ones with bite mark evidence.
Woodall testified that Brandon’s injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome, but also that bruises on the infant could have been from resuscitation and transportation. Similarly, Parent testified that shaken baby syndrome was the most likely diagnosis based on retinal hemorrhages he found in Brandon, a majority of which are associated with shaken baby syndrome.
Following testimony, Bennett was convicted and sentenced to death in February 2003.
In appeals and post-conviction, his attorneys have argued that Bennett is “factually innocent” based on changes in scientific consensus about shaken baby syndrome and short fall injuries.
In Moore’s case in California, the court found testimony of the prosecution’s medical witnesses has since been “undermined by scientific developments since trial and, thus, constitutes false evidence[.]” In early September, the California appeals court sent his case back to the trial court for the prosecution to decide whether to re-try or release him.
That case cites how in 2020, the American Academy of Pediatrics acknowledged that “short falls can be fatal and that there is no pattern of injury unique to” abusive head trauma.
Nobile listed Moore’s case as one of nine in recent years “emphasizing the scientific unreliability of the (shaken baby syndrome) hypothesis.”
Others in Mississippi have been convicted of murder in shaken baby syndrome deaths, including Tasha Shelby, who is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the death of her fiance’s son, and Jeffrey Havard, sentenced to death and later resentenced to life without parole for the death of his girlfriend’s infant daughter. Some of their attorneys have raised issues with the science – or lack thereof – behind the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
Generally, there are time limits to appealing a conviction and people can’t file additional motions raising claims that have already been decided or brought up. The state Supreme Court found exceptions in Bennett’s case when it allowed him to seek post-conviction relief in the trial court.
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