November 18, 2020 • 36 mins
In the final episode of the season, Josh Dubin explores Shaken Baby Syndrome with Kate Judson, Executive Director for the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences.
Shaken Baby Syndrome isn’t a foolproof diagnosis. There are in fact many other causes for the symptoms of Shaken Baby Syndrome that do not arise from intentionally shaking a baby at all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
At six pm, and the usual controlled cast of the
day is finally wound down. Most of your daylight hours
or filled with the sounds of giggling kids and, yes,
the occasional winding and tantrums. You've been a licensed childcare
provider for the past fifteen years and you run a
daycare center out of your house. You waved goodbye to
(00:22):
the last toddler to get picked up by his dad
from your doorway, then you head back inside. Your two
middle schoolers are sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework,
so you take advantage of the brief moment of quiet
to start getting dinner ready. But the quiet doesn't last
more than a few minutes. There's a knock on the door.
(00:43):
You're sure it's one of the kid's parents picking up
a missing toy, but your heart sinks to your stomach
when you see that it's the police. You quickly opened
the door, worried that something might have happened to your husband,
who hasn't gotten home from work yet. Hi, there is
everything okay. You ask They ask you your name, and
(01:06):
they say, ma'am, do you run a daycare out of
this house? Yes? I do. What seems to be the problem.
You'll need to come with us. What do you mean
I can't right now. I'm getting dinner ready for my kids, ma'am.
You don't understand. You need to turn around and put
your hands behind your back. You're under arrest. You'll feel
(01:27):
the cold handcuffs tighten around your wrists. What is this
all about. There's a child in your care named Maria.
You know who Maria is, ma'am. She died from brain
injuries after spending the day in your care. So I'm
gonna read you your rights. You're speechless, Maria, that little
(01:49):
girl who spent one session at your daycare months ago.
You can't compute. But you're a mom, and so you
leap into action for your kids. You don't want to
scare them, so you try to prevent your voice from
cracking as you call them over. You tell your fourteen
year old look after your little brother. Call your dad,
he'll be here soon. Tell him not to worry, and
(02:12):
you don't worry. This is all gonna work out. You
put on a brave face for them, and you try
not to panic as one of the officers pushes your
head down and that classic move that leads to suspect
into the back of a police car. Your world has
turned upside down in an instant. As the police car
pulls away from your house and down the street towards
(02:35):
the county jail. You sit in jail before your trial
and replay the events of the day. You watch Maria
over and over again in your head. You were sitting
on the carpet helping one of the little boys get
(02:58):
a train rolling on its tracks when there was a
knock at the door. You answered it and you saw
a smiling baby in the arms of her mother. This
must be Maria, you said, smiling at the toddler. You
took Maria from her mother's arms and helped the little
girl wave goodbye with her tiny hand while her mom
pulled out of the driveway. Maria was happy and playful
(03:22):
all day and un till about noon she started crying,
and you recognize that as the telltale sign of a
tired baby. You put her down for a nap, and
a few hours later Maria's mom came back. Maria was
still sleeping. You watched her picked Maria up from the crib,
trying not to wake her. Maria slept on her mom's
(03:44):
shoulder the whole way to the car. You watched this
they pulled out of the driveway. That's everything you can
remember from that day, but that's not what happened. What
you didn't know is that when Maria and her mother
pulled up to their home, Maria was slumped over in
her car seat, her head almost in her lap, and
(04:05):
she's thrown up all over herself. Maria wouldn't wake up,
so her mom called nine one one and she was
rushed to the hospital. The doctor said that the baby's
brain was bleeding and swollen, and her blood sugar was high.
The doctor's frantically worked on her, trying to revive her,
(04:26):
but eventually Maria was put on life support. She died
about a week later. Approximately two months after that, the
police showed up at your house and arrested you. Sitting
in your jail cell, you're paralyzed by the horror of
all this. One family lost their baby, and your kids
(04:48):
are at home wondering if their mother will be around
to watch them grow up. Now it's the day of
your trial. Your lawyer doesn't dispute that bleeding and swelling
of Maria's brain caused her death, but there was no
evidence that it was caused by anything you did. There
(05:10):
was no evidence whatsoever that you abused Maria in any way.
She didn't have any broken bones, no injuries to her
neck or spinal column or anything like that. And there was,
in fact another explanation for Maria's injuries. When she had
been admitted to the hospital, her blood sugar level was
four times higher than what was considered to be normal,
(05:32):
and so it was possible that Maria's brain injuries may
have been caused by an undiagnosed metabolic disorder like diabetes.
But when the prosecution makes its case, the pain and
mystery around Maria's death is sharpened to a fine point.
A child abused specialist takes the stand and tells the
(05:53):
jury that Maria had bleeding and swelling in her brain
and bleeding behind her eyes. Let me make it clear,
the expert witness said, these injuries mean that Maria incurred
physical abuse associated with trauma to the head. There's no
other way these injuries could have occurred. You sit there
next to your defense attorney and your heart starts beating fast.
(06:17):
You're sweating. You know what she's saying can't be true.
You've been watching kids for your entire adult life. You
would never you have never heard a child, and yet
you know that if you were a member of that
jury and you heard this testimony from this doctor, that
you would probably believe it too. You would also want
(06:40):
to be able to hold someone accountable for the death
of this innocent child. When the jury goes into their deliberations,
you're not just worried about the outcome of your trial.
Your heart is also broken from Maria's family. You know
you'll never be able to wrap your head around their grief.
But you all also know that putting an innocent person
(07:01):
in prison won't bring their baby back. After just two
days of deliberating, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict.
You bury your face in your hands as the verdict
has read. At your sentencing, the prosecution reads letters from
Maria's family. Her mother had addressed one of them to you.
(07:23):
It said, you killed my baby? Why? Why did you
do this? I beg this court to give you the
maximum sentence possible. You were sentenced to fifteen years in
prison for manslaughter. The story you just heard is loosely
(07:47):
based on Stephanie Spurgeon's wrongful conviction in two thousand and eight.
Innocent people have been convicted based on medical testimony which
claims that three symptoms bleeding of the brain, swelling of
the brain, and bleeding behind the eyes indicates a form
of child abuse referred to as shaken baby syndrome. But
(08:09):
this medical testimony has proven to be problematic. With the
help of the Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project from
the University of Chicago Law School, the evidence in Stephanie's
case was re examined and she was released from prison
in August, but many others are not as lucky and
continue to serve sentences for crimes they did not commit.
(08:33):
There's nothing more devastating than the death of a child.
When a tragedy like that occurs, it's natural to want answers,
how did this happen, who should we hold accountable for this,
and what could have been done to prevent it. What
might be most difficult for juris to accept is that
the death was completely accidental, that there was nothing anyone
(08:56):
did to cause it and nothing could have been done
to stop it. I'm Josh Duben, civil rights and criminal
defense attorney and innocence Ambassador to the Innocence Project in
New York. Today on wrongful conviction. Junk Science will explore
how what's known as shaken baby syndrome has been used
(09:16):
to falsely implicate people in crimes that they did not commit.
It turns out that shaken baby syndrome isn't a full
proof diagnosis. There are many other causes for the symptoms
of shaking baby syndrome that do not arise from intentionally
shaking a baby. In nine two scientists put a live
(09:48):
recess monkey under anesthesia and strapped it to a chair
made of fiberglass. The fiberglass chair was then attached to
roller skate wheels. When the tiny car acceller rated and
then decelerated quickly, the passenger's head that is, the monkey's head,
was flung backwards then quickly snapped forward. Scientists wanted to
(10:12):
study the effect of whiplash during a car crash, so
the tiny car with the little monkey passenger was designed
to mimic the movement of a car during a rear
end collision. Of the fifty monkeys that took a ride
in the whiplash car, nineteen of them sustained a concussion.
The study proved that direct impact from a hard surface
(10:35):
to the head isn't necessary to cause traumatic brain injuries.
The human brain can be injured just from a head
being violently jerked back and forth, causing the brain to
rattle around inside the skull. This study had important repercussions
for car safety. It's part of the reason why cars
(10:55):
are supposed to have headrests to prevent brain injuries due
to whiplash during an accident. But this study also interested
a British pediatric neurosurgeon named Norman guth Kelch. Now. Dr
guth Kelch had been noticing infants coming into his office
with no outward signs of abuse, no bruising, no broken bones,
(11:17):
but they had bleeding around their brain. He wondered if
these children had been getting whiplash not from a car crash,
but from their parents and caregivers. Now, at the time
in Northern England, shaking babies was a socially acceptable way
of calming, quieting, and even disciplining a fussy baby. In fact,
(11:40):
when Dr guth Kelch saw children with bleeding around their brain,
he asked parents if they sometimes shook their child. Many
parents readily confessed they would say yes, Johnny wouldn't stop crying,
so I gave him a good shaking. Dr guth Kelch
suspected that shaking an infant mimic the motion of whiplash,
(12:01):
and so he wrote a short two page paper. It
said that trauma to a baby's brain, even when no
other signs of physical abuse were present, may in fact
be caused by violent shaking. Dr goth Kelch never claimed
that there might not be other causes of bleeding around
the brain. He simply hypothesized that shaking might be the
(12:24):
cause of it. His hope was that doctors who read
his study would help teach parents to handle their infants
more gently to avoid accidental harm. After Dr goth Kelch's
article was published, other doctors continue to research this issue.
They found that three symptoms in particular were associated with
shaking a baby. These symptoms were subdural humanitoma, retinal hemorrhage,
(12:50):
and cerebral edema that is bleeding around the brain, bleeding
behind the eyes, and brain swelling. These three ms became
known as the quote classic triad, the signs that are
said to be an indicator of shaken baby syndrome. The
problem is that these three symptoms became synonymous with shaken
(13:13):
baby syndrome. If these three symptoms were present, it was
thought that a parent or caretaker must have intentionally shaken
their infant, and so when parents showed up to the
hospital with a sick child who exhibited some or all
of the symptoms of the triad, their children were taken
away from them. The parents were put on trial, and
(13:35):
they were sometimes convicted of abusing or even killing their
own child. As parents started to be accused of child
abuse based solely on the hypothesis of shaken baby syndrome,
Dr Gothkelch knew he had to do something. He never
meant for his short paper to be used as a
tool for prosecution. The whole point of his paper was
(13:57):
to help parents, not criminalize them. Dr goth Kelch continued
to fight for wrongfully convicted parents and caregivers up until
he died in two thousand sixteen at the ripe age
of a hundred and one years old. And no one
(14:17):
was really suggesting that this should be a mechanism for
prosecuting anyone. They acknowledged and and you know, pretty clearly
articulated that what they were talking about was a hypothesis
about why um children might have these findings. But it
then started to be used as a paradigm for prosecution,
and that's really where it runs into trouble because instead
(14:40):
of continuing to research and look for answers, physicians and
prosecutors started to accept it without you know, looking further
into the kinds of claims that experts were making about it.
Today on our show, we're speaking with Kate Judgson. Kate
is the executive director for the Center or Integrity and
Forensic Sciences, and she was one of the lawyers who
(15:03):
represented Stephanie Spurgeon, whose story we discussed at the beginning
of our show. So to start tell us about what
we should understand about the difference between shaking baby syndrome
as a hypothesis rather than as a diagnosis. I think
there are a lot of ways in which it differs
(15:25):
significantly from other medical diagnoses. So child abuse and particularly
shaken baby syndrome is much more a determination of ideology
of how somebody got the medical findings than than the
medical findings themselves. So the kinds of findings that are
often attributed to child abuse and shaken baby syndrome and
abuse of head trauma cases can be due to trauma,
(15:48):
but it isn't always, So there are medical conditions that
can cause these kinds of medical findings as well, and
so sometimes the evidence of actual innocence is new medical
opinion that support the idea that the child had a
disease or another kind of condition that led to their
medical findings, rather than any kind of trauma or abuse.
(16:08):
So let's back up for a second to when this
first started to be used at trial. How did this
diagnosis become something that prosecutors were able to weaponize against defendants.
Part of what makes it seductive if you're trying to
protect children and punish wrongdoing is that it seemed at
(16:33):
the time very definitive. Physicians were saying, if a child
has this set of injuries, they have been abused, and
that abuse consisted of shaking, and we know that, and
there are no exceptions, or very very few exceptions. I mean,
in fact, at the time there are plenty of transcripts
available where physicians said nothing else causes this, right, And
(16:55):
so it gives a very clear and definitive answer no,
and has to wonder, you know, in the face of
such an answer, what happened to a child who died,
who previously would have no explanation for their death. It's definitive,
it's clear and frankly really effective in court, often resulting
in a conviction almost all the time. So I think
(17:16):
that it gave people who were involved in the criminal
legal system the impression that they were successfully locking up
people who were dangerous who had murdered a child, and
it turns out it's not that straightforward. So tell us
(17:44):
more about other ways a child can come to have
the same kind of symptoms or the same sort of
trauma that are usually associated with shaken baby syndrome. There
are things like infection, serious infection, genetic disorders, problems with
blood clotting, um certain kinds of tumors, certain kinds of
(18:05):
blood cloths, you know, like a pediatric stroke. There are
cases where the medical findings are thought to have arisen
after events like choking um. But but what really started
to come to light in there was a report done
by the Swedish government that looked at medical literature that
(18:26):
discussed you know what is colloquially called the triad that
the combination of subdalhumatoma, retinal hemorrhage, and cerebral adema, and
looked at children who are diagnosed as and studies of
children who are diagnosed as being abused based on those findings.
But they found was that the data was not there,
that it was very incomplete, and they recommended that the
Swedish government no longer prosecute people under that paradigm. And
(18:49):
the reaction that that got from, you know, child advocates
and child abuse pediatricians was simply to attack the people
who did the report. Um. You know, there's been a
real lack of serious engagement around the failings in the
literature that everybody knows they're there, and so that is
(19:10):
really a shame and that's not how science progresses, and
that's not how people get fair trials. People who UM,
who are admirably concerned about protecting children have unfortunately written
things like editorials in in journals UM, engaging in personal
attacks instead of trying to figure out how to best
(19:32):
approach these kinds of cases. And that's part of what
makes studying and being critical of the shaken baby hypothesis
really difficult. People often assume that critics of shaken baby
syndrome are trying to side with child abusers, and of
course that's not the case. Researchers, doctors, lawyers who are
(19:52):
critical of shaken baby syndrome. Are just trying to make
sure that people don't get accused of cry they didn't
commit based on misleading evidence. And on the other side
of this battle, there are well meaning people who are
trying to protect children from abuse. UM I know that
(20:12):
expert witnesses and cases involving child abuse are often doctors,
So tell us more about that. Who are the doctors
who testify during these cases for the prosecution as experts?
So there are different kinds of physicians. They're not always
child abuse pediatricians, but they frequently our child abuse pediatricians.
(20:33):
There are about three hundred child abuse pediatricians in the
United States. It's a new subspecialty. I believe the first
child abuse pediatricians were board certified in two thousand eleven,
so it's quite new. So their job is to evaluate
children in hospitals or clinics for child abuse and yes,
to testify in cases or to create reports for law
(20:56):
enforcement agencies for the courts. So that's interesting. I guess
talking about biases, I could imagine that someone who's trained
to look for child abuse could just start seeing abuse everywhere.
It's what they know, it's what they study, it's what
they look for. They think, you know, this is a
symptom that comes up with people who are victims of abuse,
(21:17):
so it must be abuse. It's you know, becomes difficult
to see outside of your own tunnel vision. And so
when a medical specialty is geared directly towards one conclusion
or looking out for one thing, of course, UM, even
with the best of intentions, it could be easy for
these doctors to get tunnel vision, right. That's a real
(21:39):
concern when analysts are, for example, embedded with law enforcement.
When the crime lab is part of the police department,
for example, we see this role effects bias. Analysts start
to see themselves as part of the law enforcement team
rather than as an objective, independent scientist. But the same
issue was present when child abuse pediatricians are part of
(22:03):
a child abuse team, especially when those teams involve UM
police and investigators and prosecutors and don't involve people, for example,
from the defense bar. And since they're all human beings,
it's not unreasonable to say that the same concerns we
have about analysts housed within a police station or who
(22:23):
work very closely with police and prosecutors, that other kinds
of experts might be subject to those same biases. I
think another reason that there are so many wrongful convictions
when people are accused of abuse is that everybody involved, jurors, lawyers,
and the doctors, they don't want to get it wrong because,
let's just face it, setting a potential child abuse are
(22:46):
free is a scary proposition. The stakes are very high
in these cases, so really often um I hear people
respond to these concerns, particularly people who are who are
you know, working in kind of the child abuse field
respond to these concerns about wrongful convictions by saying, well,
we just want to air on the side of the child, right,
(23:09):
But in these kinds of cases there's really no way
to do that. Any error is harmful. This idea that
you can air safely on the on the side of
the child is a false one. And that's because if
you get this wrong. If a child is being diagnosed
as having are being determined to have been abused and
they haven't been, a couple of things can happen. One
(23:30):
is that a child can be deprived of a loving
home and separated from loving parents and caregivers. And studies
have shown over and over and over again that separating
children from their family is traumatic. It is sometimes a
necessary harm, but it is always harmful, even for people
(23:51):
who are just accused of child abuse and they don't
get convicted but just have to go through the trial,
that in itself can be so damaging to children and
their families. I mean it's anecdotal, but I pretty frequently
hear from families who say, like, we're really grateful that
(24:13):
nobody in our family was convicted, but our kids are
still suffering all kinds of harm and problems from the
trauma that was inflicted upon them just from even a
brief separation. So there may very well be good reason
reasons to separate families, But what we can't do is
go to court and say that the abuse is more
(24:34):
definitive than the science actually supports, if that makes sense.
The other problem is that when these cases are not
medically investigated carefully, there is the chance that a child
will be classified as having been abused when they actually
have a serious illness, and that is also really problematic
can potentially lead to more harm or even death because
(24:55):
of that misdiagnosis. It seems almost unlikely that evidence and
child abuse cases can be similar to other forensic disciplines
that we've talked about on our show. But it turns
out that the same tactics used to convict people based
on faulty pattern matching evidence, for example, is really the
(25:16):
same thing we're dealing with here In instances of you know,
alleged child abuse, the kind of biases that we see
in other kinds of forensic sciences are are certainly present here.
And because there is no gold standard criteria, no simple
or single test that allows anybody to make a diagnosis
(25:37):
of child abuse, you end up having to fall back
on so much subjectivity of the person examining the child
and looking at the facts, and what we know from
pattern matching disciplines in particular, but also things like ours investigation,
is that the more subjectivity that is introduced into the system,
the less reliable your result can be. Sometimes, when you
(25:59):
look at the breakdown of cases where people get wrongfully
convicted based on faulty forensic science, in a majority of them,
part of the faulty forensic science is that the expert
spoke to the jury with more certainty than the science warranted.
The same is true in cases with medical testimony. So
when a doctor says that a fracture or a subdural
(26:20):
hematoma or a retinal hemorrhage can only be caused by
child abuse, and there's no other explanation that is definitive.
It is convincing that is stated with more certainty than
the science can support, and that can certainly lead to
an unfair trial and a wrongful conviction. So, in your opinion,
(26:41):
when something as tragic as a baby dying happens, what
can we do to make sure that the cause of
death is determined correctly so that parents and caretakers stopp
being wrongfully accused based on this shaken baby high apothesis,
(27:01):
there really should be really rigorous testing in all of
these cases, and not not every case out there gets
the benefit of really careful, comprehensive testing. There's a there's
actually kind of a famous case that a district attorney
from Queens has used in a bunch of presentations where
there was a videotaped fall. A child fell at a
(27:23):
mall and and off of just a really short fall
off of a piece of playground equipment and later died,
and investigators embarked upon an extremely complex and comprehensive medical evaluation.
And when they did that they found that there were
potentially some blood disorders lurking within the family, and while
the child who died never definitively tested positive for a
(27:45):
bleeding disorder, her parents were carrying genes that suggested that
she may have had one that may have contributed to
her death. But I have to tell you that it's
uncommon that that kind of testing is done. I have
seen it become more common, and hopefully it will continue
to become more common. But that's just a great example
of a really thorough evaluation clarifying that a deceased child
(28:11):
died because of a tragic accident, not because anybody hurt her.
When I think about people convicted based on this type
of evidence, it's usually a parent that we're talking about.
Someone who has just lost their child, is going through
this unimaginable tragedy, and then to be accused of being
(28:33):
the one that actually inflicted this harm. It's a lot
to wrap your head around. It's like too much to
bear for parents who go through this. They have a
double tragedy, right They have the loss of the life
or health of their child, which is incredibly tragic, and
then they have this prosecution which threatens their freedom often
(28:58):
threatens their relationship with their other children UM. In some
of these cases, parents might lose custody of other children
in the family. It's horrifying. It's horrifying as a lawyer
to it. It must be difficult to be watching this unfold. Yeah,
it's an incredibly emotional situation. And in fact, there are
(29:19):
some lawyers who find these cases so disturbing and disruptive
that they do one and they never want to do
another one. You do care about that happening. I mean,
it's not easy. It's always difficult. They are very emotional,
they are very upsetting. It is difficult to be there
for someone who has gone through like, like I said,
(29:42):
this double tragedy, right where a child that you know
that they loved and cared about UM is gone or
very or very different, and then they've they've been accused
of this crime they didn't commit. It's it's it's terrible.
I think the only reason why I feel compelled to
keep doing it is that what has happened to these
(30:06):
folks is wrong and someone has to help them and
stand up for them. It's not an easy thing, but
I think it's a necessary one. When I agreed to
host this podcast, I set out to expose some of
the many flaws that exist in our criminal justice system. Specifically,
(30:30):
what I wanted to do was address what goes wrong
when jurors are presented with what they are told as
science but actually turns out to be well junk. The
harms of junk science go beyond innocent people having to
endure the unthinkable nightmare of being accused and convicted of
crimes they did not commit. The consequences extend even further
(30:54):
than those people having to endure the rost and most
cutting of human suffering, being torn from their life and
locked in a cage. In addition to that human tragedy,
junk science causes the moral fabric of our judicial system
to wear and tear at the seems. It causes an
(31:15):
entire institution of law and order and justice to be
completely undermined. In examining the various disciplines of forensic science
we've discussed this season, whether it was our sin or
blood spatter, eyewitness identification, or, as in this episode, shaking
baby syndrome, I knew it would be interesting and enlightening,
(31:39):
but I never expected it to affect me in the
profound manner that it has I have been in turns dumbfounded, angry, saddened,
and even outraged. A trial is supposed to be a
search for the truth the words science itself is defined
as the study of the physical and natural world through
(32:02):
observation and experiment. Our system of justice has been regarded
as not perfect, but the best way to ensure that
people who are accused of crimes get the fairest shake possible.
So how is our system of justice veered so far
off the tracks? How have we managed to bastardize and
(32:24):
bludge in What science means? I don't know if we
can ever arrive at a clear answer. There are probably
many explanations. One thing I do know is that when
human beings get involved in any endeavor, we bring our
own biases, or thirst for financial gain, or hunches and
quirks into the equation, and in the process we sometimes
(32:47):
create such a mess that it becomes difficult to untangle
the house and wise of it all. But I still
managed to find hope and away forward. And here's why.
If you've ever been fortunate enough to meet someone that
has spent time in prison for a crime they didn't commit,
one thing becomes apparent very quickly. They are the embodiment
(33:13):
of all that is soaring and remarkable about the human condition.
They are a special combination of resilience, hope, forgiveness, and strength.
They are quite simply a force of nature. So I
will continue to pour my energy, every cell in my
(33:36):
body into helping those who are still behind bars for
crimes they did not commit. I will fight to restore
signs to its proper definition in our courtrooms. I am
propelled by these men and women that represent the triumph
of the human soul. To restore one's life and freedom
(33:56):
is perhaps the highest service to your fellow human being.
I can't even find the words to describe what it's
like to walk someone out of a nightmare of a
prison cell and into the bright light of freedom, to
restore a life. The only way I can articulate it
(34:17):
is that, aside from marrying my wife and the birth
of my children, it is and always will be my
most important contribution to my fellow human beings. There's nothing
I have done in this life or could ever fathom doing,
that can ever come close. No material gain, no drug,
(34:41):
no drink, nothing at all that can approach the state
of nirvana that consumes your soul when you have helped
save a life, and I think that says a lot
about who we are at our essence. We are meant
to be of service to one another, to heal each other,
to restore each other. Not a bad message, if I
(35:05):
do say so myself, at a time when it seems
like we could really use it. I encourage all of
you to continue to keep your voices up, write those
letters to your local prosecutors and judges, be a more
conscientious jure, pitching in any way that you can. Together
(35:26):
we can ensure that one day there will be no
more wrongful convictions. Based on Junk Science. Wrongful Conviction Junk
Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
(35:47):
association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive
producer Jason Flom and the team, it's Signal Company number
One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara corn
Abor and Britt Spanglin. Our music was composed by j Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at Dubin dot Josh.
Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram
(36:11):
at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
At six pm, and the usual controlled cast of the
day is finally wound down. Most of your daylight hours
or filled with the sounds of giggling kids and, yes,
the occasional winding and tantrums. You've been a licensed childcare
provider for the past fifteen years and you run a
daycare center out of your house. You waved goodbye to
(00:22):
the last toddler to get picked up by his dad
from your doorway, then you head back inside. Your two
middle schoolers are sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework,
so you take advantage of the brief moment of quiet
to start getting dinner ready. But the quiet doesn't last
more than a few minutes. There's a knock on the door.
(00:43):
You're sure it's one of the kid's parents picking up
a missing toy, but your heart sinks to your stomach
when you see that it's the police. You quickly opened
the door, worried that something might have happened to your husband,
who hasn't gotten home from work yet. Hi, there is
everything okay. You ask They ask you your name, and
(01:06):
they say, ma'am, do you run a daycare out of
this house? Yes? I do. What seems to be the problem.
You'll need to come with us. What do you mean
I can't right now. I'm getting dinner ready for my kids, ma'am.
You don't understand. You need to turn around and put
your hands behind your back. You're under arrest. You'll feel
(01:27):
the cold handcuffs tighten around your wrists. What is this
all about. There's a child in your care named Maria.
You know who Maria is, ma'am. She died from brain
injuries after spending the day in your care. So I'm
gonna read you your rights. You're speechless, Maria, that little
(01:49):
girl who spent one session at your daycare months ago.
You can't compute. But you're a mom, and so you
leap into action for your kids. You don't want to
scare them, so you try to prevent your voice from
cracking as you call them over. You tell your fourteen
year old look after your little brother. Call your dad,
he'll be here soon. Tell him not to worry, and
(02:12):
you don't worry. This is all gonna work out. You
put on a brave face for them, and you try
not to panic as one of the officers pushes your
head down and that classic move that leads to suspect
into the back of a police car. Your world has
turned upside down in an instant. As the police car
pulls away from your house and down the street towards
(02:35):
the county jail. You sit in jail before your trial
and replay the events of the day. You watch Maria
over and over again in your head. You were sitting
on the carpet helping one of the little boys get
(02:58):
a train rolling on its tracks when there was a
knock at the door. You answered it and you saw
a smiling baby in the arms of her mother. This
must be Maria, you said, smiling at the toddler. You
took Maria from her mother's arms and helped the little
girl wave goodbye with her tiny hand while her mom
pulled out of the driveway. Maria was happy and playful
(03:22):
all day and un till about noon she started crying,
and you recognize that as the telltale sign of a
tired baby. You put her down for a nap, and
a few hours later Maria's mom came back. Maria was
still sleeping. You watched her picked Maria up from the crib,
trying not to wake her. Maria slept on her mom's
(03:44):
shoulder the whole way to the car. You watched this
they pulled out of the driveway. That's everything you can
remember from that day, but that's not what happened. What
you didn't know is that when Maria and her mother
pulled up to their home, Maria was slumped over in
her car seat, her head almost in her lap, and
(04:05):
she's thrown up all over herself. Maria wouldn't wake up,
so her mom called nine one one and she was
rushed to the hospital. The doctor said that the baby's
brain was bleeding and swollen, and her blood sugar was high.
The doctor's frantically worked on her, trying to revive her,
(04:26):
but eventually Maria was put on life support. She died
about a week later. Approximately two months after that, the
police showed up at your house and arrested you. Sitting
in your jail cell, you're paralyzed by the horror of
all this. One family lost their baby, and your kids
(04:48):
are at home wondering if their mother will be around
to watch them grow up. Now it's the day of
your trial. Your lawyer doesn't dispute that bleeding and swelling
of Maria's brain caused her death, but there was no
evidence that it was caused by anything you did. There
(05:10):
was no evidence whatsoever that you abused Maria in any way.
She didn't have any broken bones, no injuries to her
neck or spinal column or anything like that. And there was,
in fact another explanation for Maria's injuries. When she had
been admitted to the hospital, her blood sugar level was
four times higher than what was considered to be normal,
(05:32):
and so it was possible that Maria's brain injuries may
have been caused by an undiagnosed metabolic disorder like diabetes.
But when the prosecution makes its case, the pain and
mystery around Maria's death is sharpened to a fine point.
A child abused specialist takes the stand and tells the
(05:53):
jury that Maria had bleeding and swelling in her brain
and bleeding behind her eyes. Let me make it clear,
the expert witness said, these injuries mean that Maria incurred
physical abuse associated with trauma to the head. There's no
other way these injuries could have occurred. You sit there
next to your defense attorney and your heart starts beating fast.
(06:17):
You're sweating. You know what she's saying can't be true.
You've been watching kids for your entire adult life. You
would never you have never heard a child, and yet
you know that if you were a member of that
jury and you heard this testimony from this doctor, that
you would probably believe it too. You would also want
(06:40):
to be able to hold someone accountable for the death
of this innocent child. When the jury goes into their deliberations,
you're not just worried about the outcome of your trial.
Your heart is also broken from Maria's family. You know
you'll never be able to wrap your head around their grief.
But you all also know that putting an innocent person
(07:01):
in prison won't bring their baby back. After just two
days of deliberating, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict.
You bury your face in your hands as the verdict
has read. At your sentencing, the prosecution reads letters from
Maria's family. Her mother had addressed one of them to you.
(07:23):
It said, you killed my baby? Why? Why did you
do this? I beg this court to give you the
maximum sentence possible. You were sentenced to fifteen years in
prison for manslaughter. The story you just heard is loosely
(07:47):
based on Stephanie Spurgeon's wrongful conviction in two thousand and eight.
Innocent people have been convicted based on medical testimony which
claims that three symptoms bleeding of the brain, swelling of
the brain, and bleeding behind the eyes indicates a form
of child abuse referred to as shaken baby syndrome. But
(08:09):
this medical testimony has proven to be problematic. With the
help of the Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project from
the University of Chicago Law School, the evidence in Stephanie's
case was re examined and she was released from prison
in August, but many others are not as lucky and
continue to serve sentences for crimes they did not commit.
(08:33):
There's nothing more devastating than the death of a child.
When a tragedy like that occurs, it's natural to want answers,
how did this happen, who should we hold accountable for this,
and what could have been done to prevent it. What
might be most difficult for juris to accept is that
the death was completely accidental, that there was nothing anyone
(08:56):
did to cause it and nothing could have been done
to stop it. I'm Josh Duben, civil rights and criminal
defense attorney and innocence Ambassador to the Innocence Project in
New York. Today on wrongful conviction. Junk Science will explore
how what's known as shaken baby syndrome has been used
(09:16):
to falsely implicate people in crimes that they did not commit.
It turns out that shaken baby syndrome isn't a full
proof diagnosis. There are many other causes for the symptoms
of shaking baby syndrome that do not arise from intentionally
shaking a baby. In nine two scientists put a live
(09:48):
recess monkey under anesthesia and strapped it to a chair
made of fiberglass. The fiberglass chair was then attached to
roller skate wheels. When the tiny car acceller rated and
then decelerated quickly, the passenger's head that is, the monkey's head,
was flung backwards then quickly snapped forward. Scientists wanted to
(10:12):
study the effect of whiplash during a car crash, so
the tiny car with the little monkey passenger was designed
to mimic the movement of a car during a rear
end collision. Of the fifty monkeys that took a ride
in the whiplash car, nineteen of them sustained a concussion.
The study proved that direct impact from a hard surface
(10:35):
to the head isn't necessary to cause traumatic brain injuries.
The human brain can be injured just from a head
being violently jerked back and forth, causing the brain to
rattle around inside the skull. This study had important repercussions
for car safety. It's part of the reason why cars
(10:55):
are supposed to have headrests to prevent brain injuries due
to whiplash during an accident. But this study also interested
a British pediatric neurosurgeon named Norman guth Kelch. Now. Dr
guth Kelch had been noticing infants coming into his office
with no outward signs of abuse, no bruising, no broken bones,
(11:17):
but they had bleeding around their brain. He wondered if
these children had been getting whiplash not from a car crash,
but from their parents and caregivers. Now, at the time
in Northern England, shaking babies was a socially acceptable way
of calming, quieting, and even disciplining a fussy baby. In fact,
(11:40):
when Dr guth Kelch saw children with bleeding around their brain,
he asked parents if they sometimes shook their child. Many
parents readily confessed they would say yes, Johnny wouldn't stop crying,
so I gave him a good shaking. Dr guth Kelch
suspected that shaking an infant mimic the motion of whiplash,
(12:01):
and so he wrote a short two page paper. It
said that trauma to a baby's brain, even when no
other signs of physical abuse were present, may in fact
be caused by violent shaking. Dr goth Kelch never claimed
that there might not be other causes of bleeding around
the brain. He simply hypothesized that shaking might be the
(12:24):
cause of it. His hope was that doctors who read
his study would help teach parents to handle their infants
more gently to avoid accidental harm. After Dr goth Kelch's
article was published, other doctors continue to research this issue.
They found that three symptoms in particular were associated with
shaking a baby. These symptoms were subdural humanitoma, retinal hemorrhage,
(12:50):
and cerebral edema that is bleeding around the brain, bleeding
behind the eyes, and brain swelling. These three ms became
known as the quote classic triad, the signs that are
said to be an indicator of shaken baby syndrome. The
problem is that these three symptoms became synonymous with shaken
(13:13):
baby syndrome. If these three symptoms were present, it was
thought that a parent or caretaker must have intentionally shaken
their infant, and so when parents showed up to the
hospital with a sick child who exhibited some or all
of the symptoms of the triad, their children were taken
away from them. The parents were put on trial, and
(13:35):
they were sometimes convicted of abusing or even killing their
own child. As parents started to be accused of child
abuse based solely on the hypothesis of shaken baby syndrome,
Dr Gothkelch knew he had to do something. He never
meant for his short paper to be used as a
tool for prosecution. The whole point of his paper was
(13:57):
to help parents, not criminalize them. Dr goth Kelch continued
to fight for wrongfully convicted parents and caregivers up until
he died in two thousand sixteen at the ripe age
of a hundred and one years old. And no one
(14:17):
was really suggesting that this should be a mechanism for
prosecuting anyone. They acknowledged and and you know, pretty clearly
articulated that what they were talking about was a hypothesis
about why um children might have these findings. But it
then started to be used as a paradigm for prosecution,
and that's really where it runs into trouble because instead
(14:40):
of continuing to research and look for answers, physicians and
prosecutors started to accept it without you know, looking further
into the kinds of claims that experts were making about it.
Today on our show, we're speaking with Kate Judgson. Kate
is the executive director for the Center or Integrity and
Forensic Sciences, and she was one of the lawyers who
(15:03):
represented Stephanie Spurgeon, whose story we discussed at the beginning
of our show. So to start tell us about what
we should understand about the difference between shaking baby syndrome
as a hypothesis rather than as a diagnosis. I think
there are a lot of ways in which it differs
(15:25):
significantly from other medical diagnoses. So child abuse and particularly
shaken baby syndrome is much more a determination of ideology
of how somebody got the medical findings than than the
medical findings themselves. So the kinds of findings that are
often attributed to child abuse and shaken baby syndrome and
abuse of head trauma cases can be due to trauma,
(15:48):
but it isn't always, So there are medical conditions that
can cause these kinds of medical findings as well, and
so sometimes the evidence of actual innocence is new medical
opinion that support the idea that the child had a
disease or another kind of condition that led to their
medical findings, rather than any kind of trauma or abuse.
(16:08):
So let's back up for a second to when this
first started to be used at trial. How did this
diagnosis become something that prosecutors were able to weaponize against defendants.
Part of what makes it seductive if you're trying to
protect children and punish wrongdoing is that it seemed at
(16:33):
the time very definitive. Physicians were saying, if a child
has this set of injuries, they have been abused, and
that abuse consisted of shaking, and we know that, and
there are no exceptions, or very very few exceptions. I mean,
in fact, at the time there are plenty of transcripts
available where physicians said nothing else causes this, right, And
(16:55):
so it gives a very clear and definitive answer no,
and has to wonder, you know, in the face of
such an answer, what happened to a child who died,
who previously would have no explanation for their death. It's definitive,
it's clear and frankly really effective in court, often resulting
in a conviction almost all the time. So I think
(17:16):
that it gave people who were involved in the criminal
legal system the impression that they were successfully locking up
people who were dangerous who had murdered a child, and
it turns out it's not that straightforward. So tell us
(17:44):
more about other ways a child can come to have
the same kind of symptoms or the same sort of
trauma that are usually associated with shaken baby syndrome. There
are things like infection, serious infection, genetic disorders, problems with
blood clotting, um certain kinds of tumors, certain kinds of
(18:05):
blood cloths, you know, like a pediatric stroke. There are
cases where the medical findings are thought to have arisen
after events like choking um. But but what really started
to come to light in there was a report done
by the Swedish government that looked at medical literature that
(18:26):
discussed you know what is colloquially called the triad that
the combination of subdalhumatoma, retinal hemorrhage, and cerebral adema, and
looked at children who are diagnosed as and studies of
children who are diagnosed as being abused based on those findings.
But they found was that the data was not there,
that it was very incomplete, and they recommended that the
Swedish government no longer prosecute people under that paradigm. And
(18:49):
the reaction that that got from, you know, child advocates
and child abuse pediatricians was simply to attack the people
who did the report. Um. You know, there's been a
real lack of serious engagement around the failings in the
literature that everybody knows they're there, and so that is
(19:10):
really a shame and that's not how science progresses, and
that's not how people get fair trials. People who UM,
who are admirably concerned about protecting children have unfortunately written
things like editorials in in journals UM, engaging in personal
attacks instead of trying to figure out how to best
(19:32):
approach these kinds of cases. And that's part of what
makes studying and being critical of the shaken baby hypothesis
really difficult. People often assume that critics of shaken baby
syndrome are trying to side with child abusers, and of
course that's not the case. Researchers, doctors, lawyers who are
(19:52):
critical of shaken baby syndrome. Are just trying to make
sure that people don't get accused of cry they didn't
commit based on misleading evidence. And on the other side
of this battle, there are well meaning people who are
trying to protect children from abuse. UM I know that
(20:12):
expert witnesses and cases involving child abuse are often doctors,
So tell us more about that. Who are the doctors
who testify during these cases for the prosecution as experts?
So there are different kinds of physicians. They're not always
child abuse pediatricians, but they frequently our child abuse pediatricians.
(20:33):
There are about three hundred child abuse pediatricians in the
United States. It's a new subspecialty. I believe the first
child abuse pediatricians were board certified in two thousand eleven,
so it's quite new. So their job is to evaluate
children in hospitals or clinics for child abuse and yes,
to testify in cases or to create reports for law
(20:56):
enforcement agencies for the courts. So that's interesting. I guess
talking about biases, I could imagine that someone who's trained
to look for child abuse could just start seeing abuse everywhere.
It's what they know, it's what they study, it's what
they look for. They think, you know, this is a
symptom that comes up with people who are victims of abuse,
(21:17):
so it must be abuse. It's you know, becomes difficult
to see outside of your own tunnel vision. And so
when a medical specialty is geared directly towards one conclusion
or looking out for one thing, of course, UM, even
with the best of intentions, it could be easy for
these doctors to get tunnel vision, right. That's a real
(21:39):
concern when analysts are, for example, embedded with law enforcement.
When the crime lab is part of the police department,
for example, we see this role effects bias. Analysts start
to see themselves as part of the law enforcement team
rather than as an objective, independent scientist. But the same
issue was present when child abuse pediatricians are part of
(22:03):
a child abuse team, especially when those teams involve UM
police and investigators and prosecutors and don't involve people, for example,
from the defense bar. And since they're all human beings,
it's not unreasonable to say that the same concerns we
have about analysts housed within a police station or who
(22:23):
work very closely with police and prosecutors, that other kinds
of experts might be subject to those same biases. I
think another reason that there are so many wrongful convictions
when people are accused of abuse is that everybody involved, jurors, lawyers,
and the doctors, they don't want to get it wrong because,
let's just face it, setting a potential child abuse are
(22:46):
free is a scary proposition. The stakes are very high
in these cases, so really often um I hear people
respond to these concerns, particularly people who are who are
you know, working in kind of the child abuse field
respond to these concerns about wrongful convictions by saying, well,
we just want to air on the side of the child, right,
(23:09):
But in these kinds of cases there's really no way
to do that. Any error is harmful. This idea that
you can air safely on the on the side of
the child is a false one. And that's because if
you get this wrong. If a child is being diagnosed
as having are being determined to have been abused and
they haven't been, a couple of things can happen. One
(23:30):
is that a child can be deprived of a loving
home and separated from loving parents and caregivers. And studies
have shown over and over and over again that separating
children from their family is traumatic. It is sometimes a
necessary harm, but it is always harmful, even for people
(23:51):
who are just accused of child abuse and they don't
get convicted but just have to go through the trial,
that in itself can be so damaging to children and
their families. I mean it's anecdotal, but I pretty frequently
hear from families who say, like, we're really grateful that
(24:13):
nobody in our family was convicted, but our kids are
still suffering all kinds of harm and problems from the
trauma that was inflicted upon them just from even a
brief separation. So there may very well be good reason
reasons to separate families, But what we can't do is
go to court and say that the abuse is more
(24:34):
definitive than the science actually supports, if that makes sense.
The other problem is that when these cases are not
medically investigated carefully, there is the chance that a child
will be classified as having been abused when they actually
have a serious illness, and that is also really problematic
can potentially lead to more harm or even death because
(24:55):
of that misdiagnosis. It seems almost unlikely that evidence and
child abuse cases can be similar to other forensic disciplines
that we've talked about on our show. But it turns
out that the same tactics used to convict people based
on faulty pattern matching evidence, for example, is really the
(25:16):
same thing we're dealing with here In instances of you know,
alleged child abuse, the kind of biases that we see
in other kinds of forensic sciences are are certainly present here.
And because there is no gold standard criteria, no simple
or single test that allows anybody to make a diagnosis
(25:37):
of child abuse, you end up having to fall back
on so much subjectivity of the person examining the child
and looking at the facts, and what we know from
pattern matching disciplines in particular, but also things like ours investigation,
is that the more subjectivity that is introduced into the system,
the less reliable your result can be. Sometimes, when you
(25:59):
look at the breakdown of cases where people get wrongfully
convicted based on faulty forensic science, in a majority of them,
part of the faulty forensic science is that the expert
spoke to the jury with more certainty than the science warranted.
The same is true in cases with medical testimony. So
when a doctor says that a fracture or a subdural
(26:20):
hematoma or a retinal hemorrhage can only be caused by
child abuse, and there's no other explanation that is definitive.
It is convincing that is stated with more certainty than
the science can support, and that can certainly lead to
an unfair trial and a wrongful conviction. So, in your opinion,
(26:41):
when something as tragic as a baby dying happens, what
can we do to make sure that the cause of
death is determined correctly so that parents and caretakers stopp
being wrongfully accused based on this shaken baby high apothesis,
(27:01):
there really should be really rigorous testing in all of
these cases, and not not every case out there gets
the benefit of really careful, comprehensive testing. There's a there's
actually kind of a famous case that a district attorney
from Queens has used in a bunch of presentations where
there was a videotaped fall. A child fell at a
(27:23):
mall and and off of just a really short fall
off of a piece of playground equipment and later died,
and investigators embarked upon an extremely complex and comprehensive medical evaluation.
And when they did that they found that there were
potentially some blood disorders lurking within the family, and while
the child who died never definitively tested positive for a
(27:45):
bleeding disorder, her parents were carrying genes that suggested that
she may have had one that may have contributed to
her death. But I have to tell you that it's
uncommon that that kind of testing is done. I have
seen it become more common, and hopefully it will continue
to become more common. But that's just a great example
of a really thorough evaluation clarifying that a deceased child
(28:11):
died because of a tragic accident, not because anybody hurt her.
When I think about people convicted based on this type
of evidence, it's usually a parent that we're talking about.
Someone who has just lost their child, is going through
this unimaginable tragedy, and then to be accused of being
(28:33):
the one that actually inflicted this harm. It's a lot
to wrap your head around. It's like too much to
bear for parents who go through this. They have a
double tragedy, right They have the loss of the life
or health of their child, which is incredibly tragic, and
then they have this prosecution which threatens their freedom often
(28:58):
threatens their relationship with their other children UM. In some
of these cases, parents might lose custody of other children
in the family. It's horrifying. It's horrifying as a lawyer
to it. It must be difficult to be watching this unfold. Yeah,
it's an incredibly emotional situation. And in fact, there are
(29:19):
some lawyers who find these cases so disturbing and disruptive
that they do one and they never want to do
another one. You do care about that happening. I mean,
it's not easy. It's always difficult. They are very emotional,
they are very upsetting. It is difficult to be there
for someone who has gone through like, like I said,
(29:42):
this double tragedy, right where a child that you know
that they loved and cared about UM is gone or
very or very different, and then they've they've been accused
of this crime they didn't commit. It's it's it's terrible.
I think the only reason why I feel compelled to
keep doing it is that what has happened to these
(30:06):
folks is wrong and someone has to help them and
stand up for them. It's not an easy thing, but
I think it's a necessary one. When I agreed to
host this podcast, I set out to expose some of
the many flaws that exist in our criminal justice system. Specifically,
(30:30):
what I wanted to do was address what goes wrong
when jurors are presented with what they are told as
science but actually turns out to be well junk. The
harms of junk science go beyond innocent people having to
endure the unthinkable nightmare of being accused and convicted of
crimes they did not commit. The consequences extend even further
(30:54):
than those people having to endure the rost and most
cutting of human suffering, being torn from their life and
locked in a cage. In addition to that human tragedy,
junk science causes the moral fabric of our judicial system
to wear and tear at the seems. It causes an
(31:15):
entire institution of law and order and justice to be
completely undermined. In examining the various disciplines of forensic science
we've discussed this season, whether it was our sin or
blood spatter, eyewitness identification, or, as in this episode, shaking
baby syndrome, I knew it would be interesting and enlightening,
(31:39):
but I never expected it to affect me in the
profound manner that it has I have been in turns dumbfounded, angry, saddened,
and even outraged. A trial is supposed to be a
search for the truth the words science itself is defined
as the study of the physical and natural world through
(32:02):
observation and experiment. Our system of justice has been regarded
as not perfect, but the best way to ensure that
people who are accused of crimes get the fairest shake possible.
So how is our system of justice veered so far
off the tracks? How have we managed to bastardize and
(32:24):
bludge in What science means? I don't know if we
can ever arrive at a clear answer. There are probably
many explanations. One thing I do know is that when
human beings get involved in any endeavor, we bring our
own biases, or thirst for financial gain, or hunches and
quirks into the equation, and in the process we sometimes
(32:47):
create such a mess that it becomes difficult to untangle
the house and wise of it all. But I still
managed to find hope and away forward. And here's why.
If you've ever been fortunate enough to meet someone that
has spent time in prison for a crime they didn't commit,
one thing becomes apparent very quickly. They are the embodiment
(33:13):
of all that is soaring and remarkable about the human condition.
They are a special combination of resilience, hope, forgiveness, and strength.
They are quite simply a force of nature. So I
will continue to pour my energy, every cell in my
(33:36):
body into helping those who are still behind bars for
crimes they did not commit. I will fight to restore
signs to its proper definition in our courtrooms. I am
propelled by these men and women that represent the triumph
of the human soul. To restore one's life and freedom
(33:56):
is perhaps the highest service to your fellow human being.
I can't even find the words to describe what it's
like to walk someone out of a nightmare of a
prison cell and into the bright light of freedom, to
restore a life. The only way I can articulate it
(34:17):
is that, aside from marrying my wife and the birth
of my children, it is and always will be my
most important contribution to my fellow human beings. There's nothing
I have done in this life or could ever fathom doing,
that can ever come close. No material gain, no drug,
(34:41):
no drink, nothing at all that can approach the state
of nirvana that consumes your soul when you have helped
save a life, and I think that says a lot
about who we are at our essence. We are meant
to be of service to one another, to heal each other,
to restore each other. Not a bad message, if I
(35:05):
do say so myself, at a time when it seems
like we could really use it. I encourage all of
you to continue to keep your voices up, write those
letters to your local prosecutors and judges, be a more
conscientious jure, pitching in any way that you can. Together
(35:26):
we can ensure that one day there will be no
more wrongful convictions. Based on Junk Science. Wrongful Conviction Junk
Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
(35:47):
association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive
producer Jason Flom and the team, it's Signal Company number
One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara corn
Abor and Britt Spanglin. Our music was composed by j Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at Dubin dot Josh.
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Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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