Shaken-baby ruling could set precedent in New York

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — In a ruling that could have statewide significance, a judge reversed the 2001 murder conviction of a New York woman who was accused in the shaken-baby death of a toddler in her care.

In a decision released Tuesday morning, Judge James Piampiano ruled that the science used to convict René Bailey of Greece has changed significantly since her trial.

The ruling marks the first time a shaken-baby conviction has been overturned in New York on the basis of changing science. Lawyers have won a handful of reversals in other states in recent years.

"The newly discovered evidence in this case thus shows that there has been a compelling and consequential shift in mainstream medical opinion since the time of the defendant's trial," Piampiano wrote in his 28-page decision.

A motion such as the one brought by Bailey's attorney must show that new evidence has arisen that was not available at the time of the trial. Piampiano ruled that the changes in science constituted such new evidence.

"This would be the first time in New York that we have a head-on, squarely facing decision saying that a major change in the science qualifies as newly discovered evidence," said Bailey's attorney, Adele Bernhard.

Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley said her office will either appeal the ruling or retry Bailey. If appealed, the decisions of appellate courts could have significant reach, possibly impacting other shaken-baby convictions across New York.

Dozens of people in the Rochester area have been prosecuted for injuring or killing young children by shaking them violently or slamming them down, and at least a dozen are in state prison. Some of them admitted their abuse before sentencing, though others, as Bailey did, protested that they had done nothing wrong.

At Bailey's trial, prosecutors had argued that a fatal head injury suffered by 2 1/2-year-old Brittney Sheets could only have been caused by abuse at the hands of Bailey, who cared for the girl and several other children in her home day care center.

But Bernhard, who represented Bailey pro bono, argued before Piampiano earlier this year that a growing number of physicians and scientists have come to believe injuries such as those that killed Sheets can be caused by other factors, such as accidental falls or certain illnesses.

Bailey had insisted to police that Sheets had jumped off a chair and struck her head on the floor.

Starting in the 1970s, physicians developed the scientific underpinnings of what came to be known as shaken-baby syndrome. They concluded that violent shaking, and only violent shaking, could cause certain kinds of injuries to small children's brains and eyes.

As the Democrat and Chronicle reported in stories last year that focused on Bailey's cases and on the scientific controversy in general, these views became widely accepted, and people accused in shaken-baby cases were widely reviled.

But over the last 10 or 15 years, new research challenged this orthodoxy. Legal appeals based on the new science have cropped up around the nation and the world, and Great Britain and the Canadian province of Ontario engaged in systematic reviews of past convictions.

Bailey, now 55, is incarcerated at Albion Correctional Facility in Orleans County. Doorley said prosecutors will ask that Bailey remain jailed pending an appellate ruling or a new trial.