April 13, 2023 • 34 mins
In November of 2001, in Sacramento, CA, four month old Nadia was declared brain dead after being rushed to the hospital the day prior. Nadia’s father, Zavion Johnson, eventually told authorities that he had dropped Nadia by accident when giving her a bath on November 24th and that she was unusually sleepy and ultimately stopped breathing following the accident. But authorities believed that Nadia died from Shaken Baby Syndrome and the prosecution presented three witnesses to attest to this in court. Despite the testimony of 13 character witnesses and a medical expert in his defense, Zavion was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. Jason talks to Zavion Johnson and Paige Kaneb, Zavion's attorney.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
In November of two thousand and one, Zavion Johnson was
bathing his four month old daughter Nadia in preparation for
a visit with family, when, according to Zavion, she slipped
out of his hands and hit her head on the top.
At first, she appeared to be fine, and so Zavion,
his girlfriend, Raquel, and Nadia made their way to great
grandmother's house, but by the time the young family of
(00:24):
three arrived, Nadia was breathing irregularly, so they called nine
one one, Then Zavian began CPR. Nadia was rushed to
the hospital, where a CT scan revealed a slight skull
fracture in addition to brain bleeding and swelling, as well
as bleeding behind her eyes. These are the findings that
are typically associated with shaking baby syndrome. A day later,
(00:44):
she was taken off life support and passed away. Although
Zavion denied ever shaking or abusing Nadia and tried to
explain that she had slipped out of his hands in
the shower and hit her head, the established medical opinion
at that time was clear. Three expert witness has testified
at Zabion's drial that Nadia symptoms could mean only one
thing that, absent any other major injuries, Zabion must have
(01:08):
violently shaken Nadia. The defense presented their own expert with
theories that were considered outside the mainstream. Plus there's no
way that just one expert could possibly have refuted the
state's battle of three. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
(01:37):
back to wrongful conviction, where today our show involves one
of the worst tragedies any parent can ever experience, the
death of their child, And the only thing that could
make matters worse is that that tragedy is so often
compounded by our criminal legal system with a wrongful conviction
by way of the guest it shaken baby syndrome or
SPS prosecution, in which a medical professional will jump to
(02:02):
the conclusion that a set of medical findings could have
only one cause abuse, usually at the hand of the
most recent caregiver. And today we're speaking with another survivor
victim of this faulty diagnosis, Zavion Johnson and Davion were
very honored to have you here with us today. Thank you,
You're very welcome. And with him, the supervising attorney at
(02:23):
the Northern California Innocence Project Paige kaneb Page, Welcome to
the show. Thanks for having me. Now we've covered SPS
at length on Rawful Conviction Junk Science, in which our
host Josh Dubin spoke with the executive director of the
Center for Integrity and Forensic Science is Kate Judson, and
we're going to have that episode LinkedIn the bio and
Kate is going to be joining us again later to
(02:43):
discuss how the faulty SPS diagnosis related to Zav's prosecution
and wrongful conviction. But at the time of your wrongful conviction,
the scrutiny of SPS was just beginning. It had really
gone unchecked, starting way back in nineteen seventy one when
a British neurosurgeon named doctor Norman Guthkell, which was looking
for an explanation for a pattern that he had seen
in some injured and even deceased children. Brain swellings of
(03:06):
dural hemorrhaging and retinal hemorrhaging attended to be the three
main medical findings that doctors were trained that when they
saw these things, that meant it was child abuse, shaking
baby syndrome, abuse of hetroma. Right. The findings again in
Layman's terms brain swelling, brain bleeding, and bleeding behind the eyes. Now,
guth Keltre he hypothesized that this pattern could have been
(03:27):
caused by a common scolding method at the time in Britain,
which was shaking an infant or unruly child, and he
cautioned parents against the practice. But what we now know
is that they're eighty one and counting. That's eighty one
and counting medical conditions that can lead to these findings
in addition to a traumatic event. They also believed that
(03:47):
they could pinpoint the time of the occurrence, when in fact,
if a traumatic event was the cause, we now know
that the trigger of those findings could have happened begun
at any time up to seventy two hours before the
symptoms really came to light. So sadly, as we've seen,
the most recent caretaker in this case, a parent comes
(04:09):
under suspicion. But before all of that, Zapp, let's hear
about you in your life. Where did you grow up
and how would you describe yourself as a kid that
was your childhood? I grew up in Sacramento, California. Was
a pretty well mannered kid. I am the oldest of
seven as the oldest. I'm guessing you probably help must
have helped out a lot. Yeah, it's just a role
you fall into. And my would baby said, I would
(04:32):
You know, Cook just played a big brother slash father
role by being responsible. And you were still pretty young
when you actually became a father. How did you meet
Natia's mother? Getting up to high school, that's where I
met the young lady and we were together from the
age of sixteen to pretty much when the incident happened
at eighteen. And that young woman's name was Roquel, but
(04:54):
you called her Rocky. So in January of two thousand
and one you found out that she was pregnant. Now
did you two you have your own place? Did you
get a place? And did you feel like you were
really ready to be a dad at that point? So young? Yeah,
work for the State of California for cal TRANPS. I
had a pretty good head on my shoulders. Our parents
pretty much lived within walking distance from each other. We
(05:14):
kind of just split time at her dad's house and
at my mom's home until we kind of figured it out.
You know. So Nadi was born that July, right, So
what was that day like for you and Rocky? Oh, man,
I remember she just woke up in the middle of night,
was like, I think I peeted on myself. So I
went in there and tell my mom. I'm like, Rocky said,
(05:34):
she pete on herself. And then my mom was like, oh, no, boy,
she didn't peel on herself. And so we made it
to the hospital in nineteen four hours of labor. All
I remember seeing was eyes. She had the most biggest eyes.
For the longest time, I haven't had a chance to
like really reflect on this because of the simple fact
(05:57):
that for seventeen years plus, I talk about my wrong
folk conviction, I talk about my wrong fo conviction. I
talk about everything that wasn't me, you know, so I
kind of I'm not gonna say I forgot about, you know,
all this, but to remember it as good so you know,
(06:20):
I'm appreciative of this interview. Yeah, twenty six hours, nineteen
actual hours of labor. That's how long I waited from,
you know, my gift. And as many people testified at
the trial, you were in every way a fantastic, loving dad.
But that unfortunately brings us to the faithful day of
November twenty fourth, two thousand and one, when Nadia was
(06:41):
just four months old. Now, this would have been just
a day or two after Thanksgiving Day that the accident
took place. I showered with my daughter and placing her
back into the little bathtub that was inside of you know,
the big shower, she basically kicked off of my chest
and slipped out of my hands, and as a result,
so she hit her head. I picked the rub. Look,
(07:02):
there wasn't like any obvious well and or anything like that,
so I just pretty much thought to myself, close call.
Grandmother gets there and before we can get to our house,
her breathing and stuff really changed. So we get to
my grandmother's house and that's when nine one one is
called and I try to perform CPR. So Paige the
(07:23):
EMT showed up. It's around three twenty pm. They document
that Nadia looks well cared for. There's no bruises or
marks anywhere on her body. They also try and perform
CPR and rush her to the hospital, and the MTS
note as they're heading towards the hospital that like a
(07:43):
thumb print type mark is appearing on one side of
her forehead, like a red mark. And from what I understand,
that thumb sized mark was later attributed to the work
of the EMTs. The intubation process does volop stabilizing the head.
You sort of two fingers on one side and your
thumb on the other side of the forehead to keep
the head still. And later they end up documenting that
(08:05):
there bruises kind of on both sides of the forehead
develop exactly where they would have been stabilizing her forehead.
And that's just an example of what an innocent injury
can add to the rush to judgment by hospital staff
to rule an instance to be a case of child
abuse upon a patient's arrival. And so when Nadia arrived
at you see Davis Medical Center, these are the kinds
of things being noted. And at this point she still
(08:28):
had not been revived. She is placed on life support
at the hospital, but they don't really ever revive her.
You know, at the hospital they do set scans and
they see a skull fracture and the thin layer of
blood and one of the tissue layers that wrap around
the brain, the one closest to the skull. She had
retinal hemorrhagees tiny bits of bleeding in the back of
her eyes, and she had brain swelling. And there it
(08:50):
is the triad of findings that had been hypothesized to
be caused by shaking and or abusive head trauma hypothesis
that became accepted wisdom of the medical establishment without ever
being tested. I mean, how would one test it without
actually shaking and or abusing children and risking the potentially
fatal results that doctor Gothkelch had feared. So this hypothesis
(09:14):
was never tested, and yet it was and is taught
at medical schools and even in law schools all over
the world, including to the folks that you see Davis
back in two thousand and one, and they have a
child abuse team who has been trained to believe that
when they see retinal hemorrhages, subdural hemorrhages, brain swelling, you know,
(09:35):
with or without other injuries, that that means it's shaken
baby syndrome. And there's nothing else really ever even contemplated.
And so you can see it from when Nadia's first
brought in. Child abuse is all over the medical records.
So Zav, you must have been out of your mind
with worry. Meanwhile, this child abuse team at U see
(09:58):
Davis was setting a course for you your arrest had
you ever even heard of shaking baby syndrome or SPS. No,
never heard of it, never understood, never knew what it was.
It wasn't any shaking, and so it just was a
ball of confusion. When did it dawn on you that
you were beginning to come under suspicion? When I started
(10:18):
to see police's coming there, and I still, you know,
I still kind of didn't know or fully understand what
was going on and wanted to talk to a legal
representation first, and just to be clear, because Zavitt told
all his family about the fall. One of his aunts
actually told one of the nurses, so they didn't know
about the fall, even if not you know, directly from
(10:41):
zav didn't When did the doctor said too, I don't
want to paraphrase it, but it still wouldn't it mattered
or it was still going to be too late or
something like that. Well, yeah, they thought it was inconsistent
with a fall, so it didn't matter. So after a
couple of days on life support, the physicians say that
they declare that she's brain dead and has to be
removed from life support. All those years ago, I'm sure
(11:05):
it still hurts to even think about it. But at
the time it must have been absolutely devastating. And now
you and Raquel, two very young parents, had to begin
to plan a funeral for your little girl. That's just
not supposed to happen. But it did happen a week
later on December fourth, two thousand and one, and that
day found a way to get even worse. Oh man. Yeah,
(11:30):
I remember being inside of the church, and you know,
there's all of our family there and you know, whoever else,
And then I just start seeing people that don't look
like me in the church, and I'm just like, what's
going on. I'm not really paying attention to it. And
then I think when we go outside during a burial,
I start seeing kind of like the same people. So,
(11:51):
you know, I remember as taking pictures, making plans to
me back up bad. I think of my mom's house
or her dad's house. We said our you know, see later,
give her a kiss. I got in the car with
a friend of mine and she got in the car
with I think either my mom or her parents. And
before we can even get I don't know how far,
(12:13):
pretty much was pulled over by undercover cars and six
guns was drawn. I get exited out the vehicles placed
on the hood of the car in handcuffs, saying I'm
being arrested for murder and I was just like murder
of who huh. This episode is underwritten by global law
(12:43):
firm Greenberg Traurig. Through its pro bono program, Greenberg Trowg
leverages it's more than twenty six hundred lawyers across forty
four offices to serve the greater good of our communities
and provide equal access to justice for all. In the
field of criminal justice, Greenberg Trowing attorneys have exonerated and
Freedom add at Philadelphia represent numerous individuals previously sentenced to
(13:03):
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receive the American Bar Association's twenty twenty one Exceptional Service
Award for Death Penalty Representation for their work on five
death penalty cases. GT is reimagining what big law can
be because of more just world only happens by design.
(13:28):
My name is Kate Judson. I'm the executive director of
the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, and I am
familiar with Zevian Johnson's case and shaken baby cases in general.
In the case of Zeviane Johnson. On one hand, we
have Zevian retelling his account that Nadia had taken a
fall of three or four feet and hit her head
(13:48):
on the bathtub. But back in two thousand and one,
the medical establishment had not yet accepted the idea that
a short fall, even coupled with an impact on a
hard surface, could cause the triad of findings associated with
shaken baby syndrome and abuse of head trauma. Now at
the time of trial, the States experts testimony aligned with
this incorrect assumption. A forensic pathologist who performed Nadia's autopsy
(14:11):
testified that he found bleeding behind her eyes, which was
associated with what he called a rotational head injury. He
was unequivocal in saying that the injuries could not have
been the result of a fall. Doctor Claudia Greco, a neuropathologist,
testified that she found a brain injury that was what
she called the most convincing evidence that the baby died
from shaking and not from a fall of four feet.
(14:32):
And doctor Kevin Colter was the pediatrician at the University
of California Davis Medical Center who treated Nadia in the hospital.
He testified that physicians only see the constellation of injuries
that Nadia had with shaking, with falls from what he
called great heights of ten feet or higher, motor vehicle
accidents or similar events where there is what he called
(14:54):
a really significant, high velocity impact. These physicians were totally
under estimating the danger the short falls can represent. The
defense witness doctor Richard Robertson, referring to what was then
very recent biomechanical research, He testified to what we know
now that the injuries and naudio were consistent with a
short fall onto a hard surface. However, one of the
(15:16):
state's witnesses, doctor Greco, attacked that research, claiming it was unreliable,
even though it later became part of the basis of
our current understanding of shaken baby syndrome, and studies have
shown that falls, even from short distances far exceed the
thresholds for injury then even the most vigorous shaking. Yet,
it appears that Demon's trial came down to a contest
(15:38):
of experts. However misinformed the state's experts were at the time,
the contest was outweighed in the State's favor of three
to one. You know, I think one of the things
that really makes them so compelling. Besides that their doctors
and their experts is they don't have any reason to
lie about this, you know, and they believed what they
were saying. I know, you'd think that nearly the entire
(16:02):
medical community, including these three expert witnesses, would have recognized
much sooner that this SPS diagnosis requires a huge leap
in logic that ignores all the other potential causes, which,
like I said before, we now know there's at least
eighty one others. And the whole thing seems antithetical to
(16:24):
the scientific method. I mean, do you have any theories
at all as to why these otherwise learned and probably
well intentioned people were testifying this way in case after case.
Medical school doesn't focus on what is the evidence for
various propositions right. They're not spending their time looking back
(16:45):
at like was the scientific method followed or how well
did this work out? They spend their time being trained
to recognize various things right and diagnose based on them.
And pediatric deaths is a tiny part of what most
there's practice, and so they may just remember that they
were trained. When you see these things, it's abuse, and
(17:06):
only abuse, you know. The American Academy of Pediatrics put
out a two thousand and one policies statement. They called
it a technical Report on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and it
literally says, this constellation of injuries does not happen with
short balls. And the National Association of Medical Examiners had
the same thing, and the DOJ published guy it's saying
the same thing. But Xavion's lawyer had his own expert, right,
(17:29):
doctor Richard Robertson, And this guy raised doctor John Plunkett
study to say the opposite. My trial attorney, I don't
got no grievous with the man. I believe he tried
his artists. You know, yeah, he not only presented your
own expert testifying the current understanding of SPS, but in addition,
there were also over a dozen character witnesses. Man, it
(17:50):
was so many people. I don't remember everyone, but the
main people who should have been up there was there,
you know, the mother of child, my mom, you know,
I guess the people who know who knew our character.
And Zav also took the stand, right, Zav's child attorney.
He remembered Zav testifying and that it was super powerful
(18:13):
and the jury was really moved. We have this letter
from one of the jurors talking about how Zav seemed
like a really good young man, seemed like a very
loving father, seemed horribly out of character for him to
have done anything to harm his daughter. But the medical
experts said the only possibility was abuse, and so they
(18:34):
felt like they had no choice but to convict. So
you were given two concurrent life sentences, one for child
abuse and one for child abuse resulting in death, which
results in a sentence of twenty five to life. I
do recall like when I got sentence. I remember hearing
every guess eighteen years old, I had to go and
(18:54):
start a double life sentence, would you know, just me
not being able to agree, me not being able to
you know, just fully processed, you know, the loss of
my child. It just was, it had to be bottled up.
I had to, you know, like I said, going to
survival model inside of prison. So fast forward to me
(19:27):
being nineteen. Now I'm sending this to life and I
go start my time off at a level four high
desert Stay penitentiary. I didn't know how I would survive.
I didn't know how I would manage, but I walked
with something someone and I know who it is. There's
a lot of things that I've seen in front of me,
(19:50):
a lot of things that I've seen behind me, a
lot of things that I've seen on the side of me.
For seventeen years. Thankfully, nothing agreed to happened to me.
But yeah, just surviving, I had to pick up fast.
It's like I did as being an oldership. I spoke
less and I looked more, and I listened more. For
(20:11):
surely there is PTSD. For surely there is counselor needed.
For surely I am not whole, but I'm not broken either,
So you know there is hope. And while grinding through,
I understand you spent a lot of time in the
law library. Yeah, it turned into what we call on
the inside a legal bigle. And in two thousand and
(20:32):
four you followed an appeal with the Third District California
Court of Appeals, which unfortunately upheld the conviction. And then
you continued to file appeals for pretty much the next
ten long years until the Northern California Innocence Project got involved.
So he'd written to us before his appeal was denied,
and then again afterwards he's you know, filing his own
habeas petitions, you know, with a lot of help from
(20:54):
my mom. She made sure I met deadlines, like she
made sure I got help with copies of Yeah, so
his mom would print out like abstracts of medical articles
and then Zab would attach those to habeas petitions, and
the court just kept denying him, saying, you know, you
don't have an expert saying how this applies to your case,
And he also kept writing to us. And then around
(21:17):
twenty fourteen, I had been working on a shaking baby
s and germ case, a different one, and had been
learning all about the science or lack thereof, and I
decided to go meet Zav And it was hard to
walk away from him. She had to help me. But yeah, no,
like it's just it's a testament to who I am.
It's a testament to the father that I was, to
(21:39):
the son that I was, to the cousin that I was,
to the big brother that I was. So, you know,
I just appreciate her seeing that. And you know, not
too much has changed. I'm still Karen. I still love kids,
I still you know, have a zestful life, you know,
and I'm hoping to be in that role again. Well,
(22:03):
it looks like, you have that chance now, But how
did that come about? What was the strategy that brought
him home? From our perspective, the beautiful things about Zav's
case was he had always been so consistent, right, he
had just always said she fell in the shower. I
never did anything to intentionally deliberately harm her in some
(22:23):
kind of way. And all of the laywitness evidence was
that he was this great, gentle, loving person and caretaker
and father, And so we knew this really turned on
the medical So this was all about getting new or
the same original medical experts. So one of the first
(22:44):
people I approached was doctor Ryber, who had done the autopsy,
and I asked him if he would be willing to
take another look. I knew a lot of the science
around pediatric head injuries had evolved and changed, and especially
when it comes to short falls, and eventually he agreed
to do that, which was amazing. I also got another
(23:06):
independent forensic pathologist who had never looked at the case,
doctor Judy Melinik, asked her to do just a clean,
independent review based on what we now know. We got
a skull fracture expert, doctor Roger Hout, who had been
doing all sorts of experiments with pig skulls. Actually, so
doctor Rybert, in a lot of ways, was really the
(23:28):
key piece, especially in terms of the District Attorney's office's
view of the case. He eventually wrote a declaration that
explained why he'd felt like he had to say this
was shaken baby syndrome in two thousand and one, in
two thousand and two, and why now he would say
that it's consistent with a short fall, and more so
(23:49):
than shaking, because you know, as it turns out, the
forces from human shaking aren't nearly what we thought they were,
and the forces from falls are much greater. And so
he wrote this beautiful declaration that explained this whole trajectory
and what has changed and why it has changed. The
way he teaches, the way he practices, the way he
(24:10):
does his autopsies, and the way he would have mannered
and given an opinion on this case. And now i'd
like to quote doctor Ryber's very powerful statement, and just
for context, there are only three ways that an autopsy
can be categorized natural causes, homicide, or undetermined. So this
is what doctor Rybers said. Quote. While the consensus view
(24:32):
at the time of the autopsy, which I shared, led
to a conclusion that the manner of death was homicide.
The current reassessment has led me to conclude that accidental
injury cannot be excluded, and therefore the manner of death
should be considered as undetermined. End quote. Wow, I mean
it takes guts to admit when you were wrong, especially
(24:54):
when the stakes are so high, and we've seen so
many other experts that did the opposite right, they just
really dug in their heel on other cases. So I mean,
better late than never, I guess you could say, and
I commend him for that, honestly. I mean, I think
for doctor Riiber, this was one of the hardest experiences
of his life. I totally believe he believed what he
was saying at the time, and the fact that he
(25:14):
was willing to admit on paper that he was wrong
is huge and fairly unusual. I think really speaks to
his character and bravery, and that it wasn't something he
was trying to deliberately send an innocent person to prison
or something like that. And our other experts basically all
said the same. Doctor Greco, the neuropathologist, she wasn't willing
(25:36):
to do a full review of the case because she
was retired. But what she did agree to do was
just look at her own testimony and say what she
would say differently today. Doctor Greco said, you know, look,
there's new studies that have come out. We now know
these findings appear in other things, and I wouldn't say
that this proves that the child has been shaken. And
so we had four expert reports, including two from theirinal experts,
(26:01):
and we presented all of that to the court and
to the District Attorney's office, and that was in April
of twenty seventeen. You at the Northern California Insis Project,
along with the law firm of Kecker, Van Nest and Peters,
filed this habeas and the District Attorney actually did the
right thing, which we don't see that often unfortunately, and
they agreed that the petition for relief should be granted.
(26:22):
And so on December eighth, twenty seventeen, Sacramento Superior Court
Judge James Arguayas vacated Xavion's conviction. And even though the
DA had joined the defense in granting relief, that didn't
mean this was over. They had forty days to decide
whether or not to retry or drop the charges. So
though zav you're in this limbo for forty long days,
(26:43):
you were finally on the outside for the first time
in over fifteen years. I just remember saying, good look,
and then I remember getting out in my paper suit.
I remember getting dressed, you know, doing all that, and
then I talked about it before I came home. But
I wanted hopeyes, chicken and strawberry soda. You know, I
(27:04):
went without fried chicken for so long, and they're all
they do is bake it. All they do is bake
it in a hot bath too. So yeah, it was
pretty cool. And then on January eighteenth, twenty eighteen, the
chargers were dismissed. There would be no retrial, and you were,
at long last a truly free man. Must have been
(27:24):
one of the best days of your life. It was
it was I got the call, I think the night before.
She shout out to coach k that's Carry Tillery who
works for Kecker, Vanessa and Peters. I had an awesome
team and now they even awesome family too. My team
understood how much I did not want to stay in
my hometowning in Sacramento, just because you know, my PTSD,
(27:48):
you know, paranoia, you know, living out here, it just
didn't sit well with me. And I was fortunate enough
to live in a Bay Area with one of my
legal team members for about four years. Talk about walking
the walk. Not only did your legal team free you,
they took you in to make sure that you got
back on your feet. So what did that look like
in the short and even medium or long term. I
(28:10):
had a few few different jobs out there. I was
a janitor, diswasher, and ultimately I settled up on to
being a delivery driver. And you know, during that time
also I got connected with another organization, Exonerated Nation, that
helped me with my speakings, which in turn was counseling,
which in turn, you know, like I said, just helped
(28:30):
me not so much live inside of my head. I
guess I was able to, you know, travel thanks to NCIP,
and I've done, you know, numerous speakers here and there.
I understand you were involved with other exonres and lobbying
California to provide more resources to exonrees and in your case,
I know it took some time, way longer than it
should have, but eventually you were awarded compensation from the
(28:51):
state of California in May of twenty twenty two. Yeah,
you know, I would give every single dollar back to
see my daughter be twenty two this, but it does
make choices and for surely a little bit easier. Well,
we're very glad that you're willing to tell this very
painful story and just to let people know what kind
of injustice can happen in our system. People need to
(29:13):
hear it. They need to hear it, and they need
to get angry and active about it. Yeah, and you know,
like I say all the time, you know, this could
have been anybody's situation. Male, female, didn't matter to age,
really didn't really matter the race. Because the simple fact
that I'm a parent doing parent duties. It's really scary,
(29:36):
and I want people to feel scared. None of us
want to believe that these awful tragedies can happen, but
they can and they do. We have the science now,
and I hope we're getting this across to our audience. Now.
Is there anything that you like our wonderful audience to do.
For surely, just support a cause that matters to you.
Support this if it matters to you. Also, just educate yourself.
(30:00):
Educate yourself. And know that one life matters, one life matters.
So yeah, just try to donate if you can't say
no on the California Instance Project or organization similar to
it to help save a life. That's the Northern California
Innocence Project. They do amazing work, folks. This is the
living proof of it, and we'll have a link to
them in our bios. You can donate, get involved, learn
(30:22):
more about other Exon reads they've helped. And now we
come to the final segment of our show. Everyone knows
it's called closing Arguments, And first of all, thank you Zav,
thank you Paige for coming on the show and sharing
this powerful, moving and important story. And now I'm going
to turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair,
(30:44):
my headphones on and my eyes closed and just listen
to anything else you want to share with us. So, Paige,
why don't you start us off and then we'll let's
a have the last word. I think it's really important
that we all be willing to admit what we don't know,
what we're wrong about, or what we thought we knew
that we didn't and look back at the things we
(31:08):
think are true and have evidence for and actually track
what is the evidence. And I don't think anybody was
doing anything wrong in the first place. But when it
switched from the idea that shaking could cause these things
to the idea that you can diagnose shaking, you can
infer violence and violent intentional trauma from findings that we
(31:33):
now know happen without intentional trauma. I think it's time
for us to really reckon with that and look back
at all of the cases that have gone wrong. We
need to fix that in some kind of way. And
there's you know, there's people in prison still, there's people
on death row. There's also people continuing to get accused,
(31:55):
and there are also I want to be totally clear,
of course, their children getting abused, and we also need
to protect those children. But that doesn't excuse breaking up
families where abuse isn't happening, or sending people to prison
where there isn't actually any reliable evidence of abuse, and
in fact, there is very reliable evidence that the child
was sick or had an accident. And you know, instead
(32:16):
of I think maybe worrying about what's going to happen,
if we admit we're wrong, we can focus on all
the lives we can help if we can just admit
that we were all trained wrong, we all believed something
that's turned out to not be true. If we can
just flip that lens a little bit to make sure
that people can be as brave as doctor Riber and
(32:36):
can look back and say I wouldn't say the same
thing today. Even just that would be huge. I would
just like to say thank you for this opportunity, and
I would just jill anyone and everyone in the situation
or fighting for this cause to just be the lighthouse,
remain that positive light and keep shining and keep shining
(32:58):
no matter what, no matter what the storm is, no
matter what's you up against, keep shigning and being at Lahouse.
Thank you again for this opportunity. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction Special Thanks to our amazing production team
(33:19):
Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff Clyburne, and Kevin Wordis with
research by Lalla Robinson. The music in this production was
supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make
sure to follow us on Instagram at Rawful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good On all three platforms.
(33:41):
You can also follow on TikTok and Instagram at its
Jason Flam. That's it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is a
production of Lava for Good podcasts in association Signal Company
Number one. The
In November of two thousand and one, Zavion Johnson was
bathing his four month old daughter Nadia in preparation for
a visit with family, when, according to Zavion, she slipped
out of his hands and hit her head on the top.
At first, she appeared to be fine, and so Zavion,
his girlfriend, Raquel, and Nadia made their way to great
grandmother's house, but by the time the young family of
(00:24):
three arrived, Nadia was breathing irregularly, so they called nine
one one, Then Zavian began CPR. Nadia was rushed to
the hospital, where a CT scan revealed a slight skull
fracture in addition to brain bleeding and swelling, as well
as bleeding behind her eyes. These are the findings that
are typically associated with shaking baby syndrome. A day later,
(00:44):
she was taken off life support and passed away. Although
Zavion denied ever shaking or abusing Nadia and tried to
explain that she had slipped out of his hands in
the shower and hit her head, the established medical opinion
at that time was clear. Three expert witness has testified
at Zabion's drial that Nadia symptoms could mean only one
thing that, absent any other major injuries, Zabion must have
(01:08):
violently shaken Nadia. The defense presented their own expert with
theories that were considered outside the mainstream. Plus there's no
way that just one expert could possibly have refuted the
state's battle of three. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
(01:37):
back to wrongful conviction, where today our show involves one
of the worst tragedies any parent can ever experience, the
death of their child, And the only thing that could
make matters worse is that that tragedy is so often
compounded by our criminal legal system with a wrongful conviction
by way of the guest it shaken baby syndrome or
SPS prosecution, in which a medical professional will jump to
(02:02):
the conclusion that a set of medical findings could have
only one cause abuse, usually at the hand of the
most recent caregiver. And today we're speaking with another survivor
victim of this faulty diagnosis, Zavion Johnson and Davion were
very honored to have you here with us today. Thank you,
You're very welcome. And with him, the supervising attorney at
(02:23):
the Northern California Innocence Project Paige kaneb Page, Welcome to
the show. Thanks for having me. Now we've covered SPS
at length on Rawful Conviction Junk Science, in which our
host Josh Dubin spoke with the executive director of the
Center for Integrity and Forensic Science is Kate Judson, and
we're going to have that episode LinkedIn the bio and
Kate is going to be joining us again later to
(02:43):
discuss how the faulty SPS diagnosis related to Zav's prosecution
and wrongful conviction. But at the time of your wrongful conviction,
the scrutiny of SPS was just beginning. It had really
gone unchecked, starting way back in nineteen seventy one when
a British neurosurgeon named doctor Norman Guthkell, which was looking
for an explanation for a pattern that he had seen
in some injured and even deceased children. Brain swellings of
(03:06):
dural hemorrhaging and retinal hemorrhaging attended to be the three
main medical findings that doctors were trained that when they
saw these things, that meant it was child abuse, shaking
baby syndrome, abuse of hetroma. Right. The findings again in
Layman's terms brain swelling, brain bleeding, and bleeding behind the eyes. Now,
guth Keltre he hypothesized that this pattern could have been
(03:27):
caused by a common scolding method at the time in Britain,
which was shaking an infant or unruly child, and he
cautioned parents against the practice. But what we now know
is that they're eighty one and counting. That's eighty one
and counting medical conditions that can lead to these findings
in addition to a traumatic event. They also believed that
(03:47):
they could pinpoint the time of the occurrence, when in fact,
if a traumatic event was the cause, we now know
that the trigger of those findings could have happened begun
at any time up to seventy two hours before the
symptoms really came to light. So sadly, as we've seen,
the most recent caretaker in this case, a parent comes
(04:09):
under suspicion. But before all of that, Zapp, let's hear
about you in your life. Where did you grow up
and how would you describe yourself as a kid that
was your childhood? I grew up in Sacramento, California. Was
a pretty well mannered kid. I am the oldest of
seven as the oldest. I'm guessing you probably help must
have helped out a lot. Yeah, it's just a role
you fall into. And my would baby said, I would
(04:32):
You know, Cook just played a big brother slash father
role by being responsible. And you were still pretty young
when you actually became a father. How did you meet
Natia's mother? Getting up to high school, that's where I
met the young lady and we were together from the
age of sixteen to pretty much when the incident happened
at eighteen. And that young woman's name was Roquel, but
(04:54):
you called her Rocky. So in January of two thousand
and one you found out that she was pregnant. Now
did you two you have your own place? Did you
get a place? And did you feel like you were
really ready to be a dad at that point? So young? Yeah,
work for the State of California for cal TRANPS. I
had a pretty good head on my shoulders. Our parents
pretty much lived within walking distance from each other. We
(05:14):
kind of just split time at her dad's house and
at my mom's home until we kind of figured it out.
You know. So Nadi was born that July, right, So
what was that day like for you and Rocky? Oh, man,
I remember she just woke up in the middle of night,
was like, I think I peeted on myself. So I
went in there and tell my mom. I'm like, Rocky said,
(05:34):
she pete on herself. And then my mom was like, oh, no, boy,
she didn't peel on herself. And so we made it
to the hospital in nineteen four hours of labor. All
I remember seeing was eyes. She had the most biggest eyes.
For the longest time, I haven't had a chance to
like really reflect on this because of the simple fact
(05:57):
that for seventeen years plus, I talk about my wrong
folk conviction, I talk about my wrong fo conviction. I
talk about everything that wasn't me, you know, so I
kind of I'm not gonna say I forgot about, you know,
all this, but to remember it as good so you know,
(06:20):
I'm appreciative of this interview. Yeah, twenty six hours, nineteen
actual hours of labor. That's how long I waited from,
you know, my gift. And as many people testified at
the trial, you were in every way a fantastic, loving dad.
But that unfortunately brings us to the faithful day of
November twenty fourth, two thousand and one, when Nadia was
(06:41):
just four months old. Now, this would have been just
a day or two after Thanksgiving Day that the accident
took place. I showered with my daughter and placing her
back into the little bathtub that was inside of you know,
the big shower, she basically kicked off of my chest
and slipped out of my hands, and as a result,
so she hit her head. I picked the rub. Look,
(07:02):
there wasn't like any obvious well and or anything like that,
so I just pretty much thought to myself, close call.
Grandmother gets there and before we can get to our house,
her breathing and stuff really changed. So we get to
my grandmother's house and that's when nine one one is
called and I try to perform CPR. So Paige the
(07:23):
EMT showed up. It's around three twenty pm. They document
that Nadia looks well cared for. There's no bruises or
marks anywhere on her body. They also try and perform
CPR and rush her to the hospital, and the MTS
note as they're heading towards the hospital that like a
(07:43):
thumb print type mark is appearing on one side of
her forehead, like a red mark. And from what I understand,
that thumb sized mark was later attributed to the work
of the EMTs. The intubation process does volop stabilizing the head.
You sort of two fingers on one side and your
thumb on the other side of the forehead to keep
the head still. And later they end up documenting that
(08:05):
there bruises kind of on both sides of the forehead
develop exactly where they would have been stabilizing her forehead.
And that's just an example of what an innocent injury
can add to the rush to judgment by hospital staff
to rule an instance to be a case of child
abuse upon a patient's arrival. And so when Nadia arrived
at you see Davis Medical Center, these are the kinds
of things being noted. And at this point she still
(08:28):
had not been revived. She is placed on life support
at the hospital, but they don't really ever revive her.
You know, at the hospital they do set scans and
they see a skull fracture and the thin layer of
blood and one of the tissue layers that wrap around
the brain, the one closest to the skull. She had
retinal hemorrhagees tiny bits of bleeding in the back of
her eyes, and she had brain swelling. And there it
(08:50):
is the triad of findings that had been hypothesized to
be caused by shaking and or abusive head trauma hypothesis
that became accepted wisdom of the medical establishment without ever
being tested. I mean, how would one test it without
actually shaking and or abusing children and risking the potentially
fatal results that doctor Gothkelch had feared. So this hypothesis
(09:14):
was never tested, and yet it was and is taught
at medical schools and even in law schools all over
the world, including to the folks that you see Davis
back in two thousand and one, and they have a
child abuse team who has been trained to believe that
when they see retinal hemorrhages, subdural hemorrhages, brain swelling, you know,
(09:35):
with or without other injuries, that that means it's shaken
baby syndrome. And there's nothing else really ever even contemplated.
And so you can see it from when Nadia's first
brought in. Child abuse is all over the medical records.
So Zav, you must have been out of your mind
with worry. Meanwhile, this child abuse team at U see
(09:58):
Davis was setting a course for you your arrest had
you ever even heard of shaking baby syndrome or SPS. No,
never heard of it, never understood, never knew what it was.
It wasn't any shaking, and so it just was a
ball of confusion. When did it dawn on you that
you were beginning to come under suspicion? When I started
(10:18):
to see police's coming there, and I still, you know,
I still kind of didn't know or fully understand what
was going on and wanted to talk to a legal
representation first, and just to be clear, because Zavitt told
all his family about the fall. One of his aunts
actually told one of the nurses, so they didn't know
about the fall, even if not you know, directly from
(10:41):
zav didn't When did the doctor said too, I don't
want to paraphrase it, but it still wouldn't it mattered
or it was still going to be too late or
something like that. Well, yeah, they thought it was inconsistent
with a fall, so it didn't matter. So after a
couple of days on life support, the physicians say that
they declare that she's brain dead and has to be
removed from life support. All those years ago, I'm sure
(11:05):
it still hurts to even think about it. But at
the time it must have been absolutely devastating. And now
you and Raquel, two very young parents, had to begin
to plan a funeral for your little girl. That's just
not supposed to happen. But it did happen a week
later on December fourth, two thousand and one, and that
day found a way to get even worse. Oh man. Yeah,
(11:30):
I remember being inside of the church, and you know,
there's all of our family there and you know, whoever else,
And then I just start seeing people that don't look
like me in the church, and I'm just like, what's
going on. I'm not really paying attention to it. And
then I think when we go outside during a burial,
I start seeing kind of like the same people. So,
(11:51):
you know, I remember as taking pictures, making plans to
me back up bad. I think of my mom's house
or her dad's house. We said our you know, see later,
give her a kiss. I got in the car with
a friend of mine and she got in the car
with I think either my mom or her parents. And
before we can even get I don't know how far,
(12:13):
pretty much was pulled over by undercover cars and six
guns was drawn. I get exited out the vehicles placed
on the hood of the car in handcuffs, saying I'm
being arrested for murder and I was just like murder
of who huh. This episode is underwritten by global law
(12:43):
firm Greenberg Traurig. Through its pro bono program, Greenberg Trowg
leverages it's more than twenty six hundred lawyers across forty
four offices to serve the greater good of our communities
and provide equal access to justice for all. In the
field of criminal justice, Greenberg Trowing attorneys have exonerated and
Freedom add at Philadelphia represent numerous individuals previously sentenced to
(13:03):
life for crimes committed as juveniles and resentencing hearings, and
receive the American Bar Association's twenty twenty one Exceptional Service
Award for Death Penalty Representation for their work on five
death penalty cases. GT is reimagining what big law can
be because of more just world only happens by design.
(13:28):
My name is Kate Judson. I'm the executive director of
the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, and I am
familiar with Zevian Johnson's case and shaken baby cases in general.
In the case of Zeviane Johnson. On one hand, we
have Zevian retelling his account that Nadia had taken a
fall of three or four feet and hit her head
(13:48):
on the bathtub. But back in two thousand and one,
the medical establishment had not yet accepted the idea that
a short fall, even coupled with an impact on a
hard surface, could cause the triad of findings associated with
shaken baby syndrome and abuse of head trauma. Now at
the time of trial, the States experts testimony aligned with
this incorrect assumption. A forensic pathologist who performed Nadia's autopsy
(14:11):
testified that he found bleeding behind her eyes, which was
associated with what he called a rotational head injury. He
was unequivocal in saying that the injuries could not have
been the result of a fall. Doctor Claudia Greco, a neuropathologist,
testified that she found a brain injury that was what
she called the most convincing evidence that the baby died
from shaking and not from a fall of four feet.
(14:32):
And doctor Kevin Colter was the pediatrician at the University
of California Davis Medical Center who treated Nadia in the hospital.
He testified that physicians only see the constellation of injuries
that Nadia had with shaking, with falls from what he
called great heights of ten feet or higher, motor vehicle
accidents or similar events where there is what he called
(14:54):
a really significant, high velocity impact. These physicians were totally
under estimating the danger the short falls can represent. The
defense witness doctor Richard Robertson, referring to what was then
very recent biomechanical research, He testified to what we know
now that the injuries and naudio were consistent with a
short fall onto a hard surface. However, one of the
(15:16):
state's witnesses, doctor Greco, attacked that research, claiming it was unreliable,
even though it later became part of the basis of
our current understanding of shaken baby syndrome, and studies have
shown that falls, even from short distances far exceed the
thresholds for injury then even the most vigorous shaking. Yet,
it appears that Demon's trial came down to a contest
(15:38):
of experts. However misinformed the state's experts were at the time,
the contest was outweighed in the State's favor of three
to one. You know, I think one of the things
that really makes them so compelling. Besides that their doctors
and their experts is they don't have any reason to
lie about this, you know, and they believed what they
were saying. I know, you'd think that nearly the entire
(16:02):
medical community, including these three expert witnesses, would have recognized
much sooner that this SPS diagnosis requires a huge leap
in logic that ignores all the other potential causes, which,
like I said before, we now know there's at least
eighty one others. And the whole thing seems antithetical to
(16:24):
the scientific method. I mean, do you have any theories
at all as to why these otherwise learned and probably
well intentioned people were testifying this way in case after case.
Medical school doesn't focus on what is the evidence for
various propositions right. They're not spending their time looking back
(16:45):
at like was the scientific method followed or how well
did this work out? They spend their time being trained
to recognize various things right and diagnose based on them.
And pediatric deaths is a tiny part of what most
there's practice, and so they may just remember that they
were trained. When you see these things, it's abuse, and
(17:06):
only abuse, you know. The American Academy of Pediatrics put
out a two thousand and one policies statement. They called
it a technical Report on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and it
literally says, this constellation of injuries does not happen with
short balls. And the National Association of Medical Examiners had
the same thing, and the DOJ published guy it's saying
the same thing. But Xavion's lawyer had his own expert, right,
(17:29):
doctor Richard Robertson, And this guy raised doctor John Plunkett
study to say the opposite. My trial attorney, I don't
got no grievous with the man. I believe he tried
his artists. You know, yeah, he not only presented your
own expert testifying the current understanding of SPS, but in addition,
there were also over a dozen character witnesses. Man, it
(17:50):
was so many people. I don't remember everyone, but the
main people who should have been up there was there,
you know, the mother of child, my mom, you know,
I guess the people who know who knew our character.
And Zav also took the stand, right, Zav's child attorney.
He remembered Zav testifying and that it was super powerful
(18:13):
and the jury was really moved. We have this letter
from one of the jurors talking about how Zav seemed
like a really good young man, seemed like a very
loving father, seemed horribly out of character for him to
have done anything to harm his daughter. But the medical
experts said the only possibility was abuse, and so they
(18:34):
felt like they had no choice but to convict. So
you were given two concurrent life sentences, one for child
abuse and one for child abuse resulting in death, which
results in a sentence of twenty five to life. I
do recall like when I got sentence. I remember hearing
every guess eighteen years old, I had to go and
(18:54):
start a double life sentence, would you know, just me
not being able to agree, me not being able to
you know, just fully processed, you know, the loss of
my child. It just was, it had to be bottled up.
I had to, you know, like I said, going to
survival model inside of prison. So fast forward to me
(19:27):
being nineteen. Now I'm sending this to life and I
go start my time off at a level four high
desert Stay penitentiary. I didn't know how I would survive.
I didn't know how I would manage, but I walked
with something someone and I know who it is. There's
a lot of things that I've seen in front of me,
(19:50):
a lot of things that I've seen behind me, a
lot of things that I've seen on the side of me.
For seventeen years. Thankfully, nothing agreed to happened to me.
But yeah, just surviving, I had to pick up fast.
It's like I did as being an oldership. I spoke
less and I looked more, and I listened more. For
(20:11):
surely there is PTSD. For surely there is counselor needed.
For surely I am not whole, but I'm not broken either,
So you know there is hope. And while grinding through,
I understand you spent a lot of time in the
law library. Yeah, it turned into what we call on
the inside a legal bigle. And in two thousand and
(20:32):
four you followed an appeal with the Third District California
Court of Appeals, which unfortunately upheld the conviction. And then
you continued to file appeals for pretty much the next
ten long years until the Northern California Innocence Project got involved.
So he'd written to us before his appeal was denied,
and then again afterwards he's you know, filing his own
habeas petitions, you know, with a lot of help from
(20:54):
my mom. She made sure I met deadlines, like she
made sure I got help with copies of Yeah, so
his mom would print out like abstracts of medical articles
and then Zab would attach those to habeas petitions, and
the court just kept denying him, saying, you know, you
don't have an expert saying how this applies to your case,
And he also kept writing to us. And then around
(21:17):
twenty fourteen, I had been working on a shaking baby
s and germ case, a different one, and had been
learning all about the science or lack thereof, and I
decided to go meet Zav And it was hard to
walk away from him. She had to help me. But yeah, no,
like it's just it's a testament to who I am.
It's a testament to the father that I was, to
(21:39):
the son that I was, to the cousin that I was,
to the big brother that I was. So, you know,
I just appreciate her seeing that. And you know, not
too much has changed. I'm still Karen. I still love kids,
I still you know, have a zestful life, you know,
and I'm hoping to be in that role again. Well,
(22:03):
it looks like, you have that chance now, But how
did that come about? What was the strategy that brought
him home? From our perspective, the beautiful things about Zav's
case was he had always been so consistent, right, he
had just always said she fell in the shower. I
never did anything to intentionally deliberately harm her in some
(22:23):
kind of way. And all of the laywitness evidence was
that he was this great, gentle, loving person and caretaker
and father, And so we knew this really turned on
the medical So this was all about getting new or
the same original medical experts. So one of the first
(22:44):
people I approached was doctor Ryber, who had done the autopsy,
and I asked him if he would be willing to
take another look. I knew a lot of the science
around pediatric head injuries had evolved and changed, and especially
when it comes to short falls, and eventually he agreed
to do that, which was amazing. I also got another
(23:06):
independent forensic pathologist who had never looked at the case,
doctor Judy Melinik, asked her to do just a clean,
independent review based on what we now know. We got
a skull fracture expert, doctor Roger Hout, who had been
doing all sorts of experiments with pig skulls. Actually, so
doctor Rybert, in a lot of ways, was really the
(23:28):
key piece, especially in terms of the District Attorney's office's
view of the case. He eventually wrote a declaration that
explained why he'd felt like he had to say this
was shaken baby syndrome in two thousand and one, in
two thousand and two, and why now he would say
that it's consistent with a short fall, and more so
(23:49):
than shaking, because you know, as it turns out, the
forces from human shaking aren't nearly what we thought they were,
and the forces from falls are much greater. And so
he wrote this beautiful declaration that explained this whole trajectory
and what has changed and why it has changed. The
way he teaches, the way he practices, the way he
(24:10):
does his autopsies, and the way he would have mannered
and given an opinion on this case. And now i'd
like to quote doctor Ryber's very powerful statement, and just
for context, there are only three ways that an autopsy
can be categorized natural causes, homicide, or undetermined. So this
is what doctor Rybers said. Quote. While the consensus view
(24:32):
at the time of the autopsy, which I shared, led
to a conclusion that the manner of death was homicide.
The current reassessment has led me to conclude that accidental
injury cannot be excluded, and therefore the manner of death
should be considered as undetermined. End quote. Wow, I mean
it takes guts to admit when you were wrong, especially
(24:54):
when the stakes are so high, and we've seen so
many other experts that did the opposite right, they just
really dug in their heel on other cases. So I mean,
better late than never, I guess you could say, and
I commend him for that, honestly. I mean, I think
for doctor Riiber, this was one of the hardest experiences
of his life. I totally believe he believed what he
was saying at the time, and the fact that he
(25:14):
was willing to admit on paper that he was wrong
is huge and fairly unusual. I think really speaks to
his character and bravery, and that it wasn't something he
was trying to deliberately send an innocent person to prison
or something like that. And our other experts basically all
said the same. Doctor Greco, the neuropathologist, she wasn't willing
(25:36):
to do a full review of the case because she
was retired. But what she did agree to do was
just look at her own testimony and say what she
would say differently today. Doctor Greco said, you know, look,
there's new studies that have come out. We now know
these findings appear in other things, and I wouldn't say
that this proves that the child has been shaken. And
so we had four expert reports, including two from theirinal experts,
(26:01):
and we presented all of that to the court and
to the District Attorney's office, and that was in April
of twenty seventeen. You at the Northern California Insis Project,
along with the law firm of Kecker, Van Nest and Peters,
filed this habeas and the District Attorney actually did the
right thing, which we don't see that often unfortunately, and
they agreed that the petition for relief should be granted.
(26:22):
And so on December eighth, twenty seventeen, Sacramento Superior Court
Judge James Arguayas vacated Xavion's conviction. And even though the
DA had joined the defense in granting relief, that didn't
mean this was over. They had forty days to decide
whether or not to retry or drop the charges. So
though zav you're in this limbo for forty long days,
(26:43):
you were finally on the outside for the first time
in over fifteen years. I just remember saying, good look,
and then I remember getting out in my paper suit.
I remember getting dressed, you know, doing all that, and
then I talked about it before I came home. But
I wanted hopeyes, chicken and strawberry soda. You know, I
(27:04):
went without fried chicken for so long, and they're all
they do is bake it. All they do is bake
it in a hot bath too. So yeah, it was
pretty cool. And then on January eighteenth, twenty eighteen, the
chargers were dismissed. There would be no retrial, and you were,
at long last a truly free man. Must have been
(27:24):
one of the best days of your life. It was
it was I got the call, I think the night before.
She shout out to coach k that's Carry Tillery who
works for Kecker, Vanessa and Peters. I had an awesome
team and now they even awesome family too. My team
understood how much I did not want to stay in
my hometowning in Sacramento, just because you know, my PTSD,
(27:48):
you know, paranoia, you know, living out here, it just
didn't sit well with me. And I was fortunate enough
to live in a Bay Area with one of my
legal team members for about four years. Talk about walking
the walk. Not only did your legal team free you,
they took you in to make sure that you got
back on your feet. So what did that look like
in the short and even medium or long term. I
(28:10):
had a few few different jobs out there. I was
a janitor, diswasher, and ultimately I settled up on to
being a delivery driver. And you know, during that time
also I got connected with another organization, Exonerated Nation, that
helped me with my speakings, which in turn was counseling,
which in turn, you know, like I said, just helped
(28:30):
me not so much live inside of my head. I
guess I was able to, you know, travel thanks to NCIP,
and I've done, you know, numerous speakers here and there.
I understand you were involved with other exonres and lobbying
California to provide more resources to exonrees and in your case,
I know it took some time, way longer than it
should have, but eventually you were awarded compensation from the
(28:51):
state of California in May of twenty twenty two. Yeah,
you know, I would give every single dollar back to
see my daughter be twenty two this, but it does
make choices and for surely a little bit easier. Well,
we're very glad that you're willing to tell this very
painful story and just to let people know what kind
of injustice can happen in our system. People need to
(29:13):
hear it. They need to hear it, and they need
to get angry and active about it. Yeah, and you know,
like I say all the time, you know, this could
have been anybody's situation. Male, female, didn't matter to age,
really didn't really matter the race. Because the simple fact
that I'm a parent doing parent duties. It's really scary,
(29:36):
and I want people to feel scared. None of us
want to believe that these awful tragedies can happen, but
they can and they do. We have the science now,
and I hope we're getting this across to our audience. Now.
Is there anything that you like our wonderful audience to do.
For surely, just support a cause that matters to you.
Support this if it matters to you. Also, just educate yourself.
(30:00):
Educate yourself. And know that one life matters, one life matters.
So yeah, just try to donate if you can't say
no on the California Instance Project or organization similar to
it to help save a life. That's the Northern California
Innocence Project. They do amazing work, folks. This is the
living proof of it, and we'll have a link to
them in our bios. You can donate, get involved, learn
(30:22):
more about other Exon reads they've helped. And now we
come to the final segment of our show. Everyone knows
it's called closing Arguments, And first of all, thank you Zav,
thank you Paige for coming on the show and sharing
this powerful, moving and important story. And now I'm going
to turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair,
(30:44):
my headphones on and my eyes closed and just listen
to anything else you want to share with us. So, Paige,
why don't you start us off and then we'll let's
a have the last word. I think it's really important
that we all be willing to admit what we don't know,
what we're wrong about, or what we thought we knew
that we didn't and look back at the things we
(31:08):
think are true and have evidence for and actually track
what is the evidence. And I don't think anybody was
doing anything wrong in the first place. But when it
switched from the idea that shaking could cause these things
to the idea that you can diagnose shaking, you can
infer violence and violent intentional trauma from findings that we
(31:33):
now know happen without intentional trauma. I think it's time
for us to really reckon with that and look back
at all of the cases that have gone wrong. We
need to fix that in some kind of way. And
there's you know, there's people in prison still, there's people
on death row. There's also people continuing to get accused,
(31:55):
and there are also I want to be totally clear,
of course, their children getting abused, and we also need
to protect those children. But that doesn't excuse breaking up
families where abuse isn't happening, or sending people to prison
where there isn't actually any reliable evidence of abuse, and
in fact, there is very reliable evidence that the child
was sick or had an accident. And you know, instead
(32:16):
of I think maybe worrying about what's going to happen,
if we admit we're wrong, we can focus on all
the lives we can help if we can just admit
that we were all trained wrong, we all believed something
that's turned out to not be true. If we can
just flip that lens a little bit to make sure
that people can be as brave as doctor Riber and
(32:36):
can look back and say I wouldn't say the same
thing today. Even just that would be huge. I would
just like to say thank you for this opportunity, and
I would just jill anyone and everyone in the situation
or fighting for this cause to just be the lighthouse,
remain that positive light and keep shining and keep shining
(32:58):
no matter what, no matter what the storm is, no
matter what's you up against, keep shigning and being at Lahouse.
Thank you again for this opportunity. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction Special Thanks to our amazing production team
(33:19):
Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff Clyburne, and Kevin Wordis with
research by Lalla Robinson. The music in this production was
supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make
sure to follow us on Instagram at Rawful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good On all three platforms.
(33:41):
You can also follow on TikTok and Instagram at its
Jason Flam. That's it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is a
production of Lava for Good podcasts in association Signal Company
Number one. The
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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