Ontario’s Court of Appeal acquitted Jennifer Gaskin, 51, of manslaughter on Tuesday in the 1999 death of her infant son, Joeseph, overturning a 2002 conviction based on medical evidence the court said has since been discredited.
Crown and defence lawyers jointly asked the three-judge panel to quash the conviction, according to the Canadian Press, and to enter an acquittal after new expert reports raised doubt about the original finding that Gaskin had shaken her son to death.
The fresh evidence shows that Ms. Gaskin’s conviction is unsustainable. She is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Justice Peter Lauwers wrote the ruling for the panel, which also included Justices Sally Gomery and Renee Pomerance, describing the case as part of “a sad litany of cases of wrongful convictions based on the discredited ‘shaken baby syndrome’ as the cause of a child’s death,” the Canadian Press reported. Lauwers noted Gaskin’s case, unlike some earlier ones, was not linked to the disgraced pathologist Charles Smith but followed “the same flawed approach to the applicable forensic science,” according to the Globe and Mail.
Joeseph was born nine-and-a-half weeks premature in April 1999 and spent his first two months in hospital before coming home to Gaskin in Ignace, Ontario, in mid-June that year, the Globe and Mail reported. Two days after Gaskin took him to a clinic over vomiting and dehydration, the baby stopped breathing on July 2, 1999, while her boyfriend was changing his diaper, the newspaper reported.
An autopsy by a Thunder Bay hospital pathologist, backed by a second opinion from a neuropathologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, concluded the baby had been shaken over roughly two weeks, a finding Gaskin denied, according to the Globe and Mail. A jury convicted her of manslaughter in 2002; she was sentenced to two years less a day and served 18 months, the Canadian Press reported.
New medical evidence
Gaskin’s legal team, led by Innocence Canada co-founder James Lockyer, submitted findings from a provincial expert panel that reviewed shaken-baby convictions from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, along with fresh reports from a forensic neuropathologist, a biomechanical engineer and a forensic pathologist, according to the Globe and Mail. Those reports found some of the injuries had been mischaracterized as bruising when they were in fact strokes, and that testing available today was not possible in 1999, the newspaper reported.
The three additional experts could not rule out an inflicted injury but said Joeseph could also have died of what was then known as sudden infant death syndrome, the Canadian Press reported.
As of today, the original expert evidence supporting the conviction of the appellant at trial has been wholly undermined and placed in grave doubt.
The Crown made that statement in written submissions, offering Gaskin its “deepest sympathies,” according to the Canadian Press. “The investigation of infant death is complex, involving forensic examination and external and internal dissections — none of which were available at the time of the appellant’s conviction,” the Crown said.
“It was an important day. It may be the beginning of the end of shaken baby syndrome, at least in Ontario, potentially in Canada,” Lockyer told reporters outside the courthouse. He said Innocence Canada, which works to clear people it believes were wrongfully convicted, is reviewing “more than one” other shaken-baby case.
Gaskin’s two surviving children, a daughter about a year older than Joeseph and a son born while she was on bail, were taken by child welfare services after the death and later adopted by families in Dryden, Ontario; a publication ban protects their identities, the Globe and Mail reported. Gaskin reunited with her daughter for the first time in more than two decades the night before Tuesday’s hearing, and her son, who had planned to attend, fell ill and could not appear, the Canadian Press reported.
I feel wonderful. I feel lighter. I feel like years and years have been taken off my life. They took my life and they made it right.
Gaskin, who now lives in eastern Ontario and works as a restaurant hostess, wore a T-shirt reading “innocent” as she left court, according to the Globe and Mail. “Now that this is over, I’m hoping that I won’t feel like people still look at me that way, because I won’t look at myself that way,” she told reporters. “Now I’m just going to live my best life.”
The case follows a provincial reckoning over pediatric forensic pathology after a 2007 coroner’s review found major flaws in autopsies performed by Smith, who examined more than 1,000 child deaths as head forensic pathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children. A subsequent public inquiry led by Justice Stephen Goudge recommended in its 2008 report a review of 142 shaken-baby cases dating to the mid-1980s, and the province’s coroner’s office went on to identify about 220 suspected cases for examination, according to CBC.
Lockyer said he does not know how many other convictions may unravel on similar grounds, but confirmed that Innocence Canada is actively reviewing additional shaken-baby cases.