Iain’s Blog

Hi,

saw this story and you have to wonder if some expert says this can’t happen ever…

They can be wrong. No more blind faith in them, there are 2 sides to most arguments and they should be bothered to see both sides.

Meanwhile this little lad lives and defies those that know it all……. 

Nicholas Coke was never supposed to reach his first birthday.

He was born with a birth defect known as anencephaly whereby children are missing part, or most of their brains.

“He doesn’t have a brain — he just has the brain stem,” explains his mother Sheena. “He can’t see, he can’t hear, he can’t suck … He doesn’t crawl, he doesn’t sit up.”Most children born with anencephaly are also missing the tops of their skulls and die within hours of birth. Nicholas’ survival has amazed doctors and is why his mum calls him a ‘miracle baby’.

Baby Nicholas’ brain stem controls the basic functions of breathing and certain reflexes, without a ‘higher’ brain he is not capable of thinking or emotion.

However, Sheena Cole says her son has been able to respond to her. “He’s smiling,” she said “We even got him to laugh for the first time and that was wonderful.”

Although there is no single cause of birth defects such as anencephaly, taking folic acid during pregnancy can reduce the chances of neural tube defects by 50-70%.

Nicholas’ family are grateful of every day they have with the little boy as they know that he cannot realistically defy the odds for much longer.

“It’s hard to know that I’m going to be burying my son soon,” says Sheena, “but it’s wonderful to know he’s made it a year.”

It should be a tragic story, but the evident joy Nicholas has brought his family in his short life is inspiring, and they are truly thankful for every day they have together.

Another case goes out of the window after dragging on for several years of pain for all concerned. About half way down I have highlighted a paragraph - as it shows how the theory pre programmes ppeople to believe it must be SBS…just by virtue of its name.

CONWAY —  After nearly four hours of deliberations, a jury came back with a not guilty verdict in the trial of Miles Lee Ferguson 27 of Portsmouth , Ohio, who was accused of killing his 5-week-old daughter.

“This young man wasn’t guilty but he has lived a nightmare for these past three years and you can see the stress they have all been under is immeasurable and I’m just so happy for them because his family needs him and the last place in the world for him to be is in the penitentiary,“ said defense attorney Morgan Martin.

Ferguson, 27, was charged with homicide by child abuse in Mylee Grace Ferguson’s death.

Ferguson wouldn’t comment but kept repeating, “praise the Lord,“ as he hugged his wife, family and friends.

Ferguson cried heavily as he thanked the jury and court personnel minutes after the verdict was announced.

Dozens of supporters who have been lining up since the trial started Nov. 9 outside the Horry County Courthouse in Conway cheered as Ferguson walked outside Wednesday night.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments shortly after 5pm Wednesday.

Ferguson sat sobbing holding his wife’s hand as Martin told the jury about how his client “is not a violent man… look at him, he is a good boy, he loved that baby.“

Martin continued to say, “this isn’t an ‘I think he might done it, this isn’t a he probably done it this isn’t a sure don’t look good this is beyond each and every reasonable doubt and if there is a real possibility that (that) young man is not guilty then it’s your obligation to acquit him.”

“It makes sense that what he did, didn’t have to be a premeditated evil, it didn’t have to have a motive, but he snapped and it’s the sad truth, and it happens to people,“ said Fifteenth Circuit Assistant Solicitor Candice Lively.

Prosecutors also presented rebuttal witness Wednesday morning.
Shannon Karlayne Toole, a pediatric nurse practitioner at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, took the stand where prosecutors asked her whether Ferguson ever mentioned or demonstrated that he shook his baby during his conversation with her.
Toole replied she doesn’t recall Ferguson ever did that.
Shortly after Toole’s testimony and during a short break, Ashlee Ferguson, the defendant’s wife, walked up to Toole and said, “You lied … you’re a liar.”
Lively made sure that the court, minus the presence of thee jury, was aware of the encounter.
“Your honor, I know there is a lot of tension in this case and emotions are very high, but we deserve to have a fair trial,” Lively said.
Toole went back on the stand and told 15th Circuit Court Judge Ben Culbertson about the incident prosecutors say made her feel intimidated by Ashlee Ferguson.
The state maintained that Ferguson shook Mylee to death.
“Why would a demonstration be important in the case, such as in a child abuse case?” Lively asked.
“This case, from when I got the call, was in reference to what appear to be a shaken baby syndrome; therefore what I responded by assuming that the child had been shaken by somebody,”  state witness Karen Sams, of the state Department Social Services Office in Charleston, testified.

Ferguson took the stand Tuesday to defend himself.
Police said Mylee was beaten at a home near Arcadian Shores in 2007 while the Fergusons vacationed in Myrtle Beach from Ohio. Ferguson claims his baby was unresponsive and he shook her to revive, not kill, her.
Fergusons’s defense team presented several of his family and friends as witnesses to the jury Tuesday.
“He is a great man,” the defendant’s wife testified. “No one could ask for a better husband than him.”
During the state’s cross examination, prosecutors kept asking Ferguson if he shook his baby.
Ferguson, visibly agitated, replied. “ I would never shake my baby violently. No one should ever shake a baby …  ever.”
Lively asked Ferguson to use a doll to describe exactly what happened the day he realized something was wrong with his baby.
Ferguson, who was 24 at the time of Mylee’s death, originally was charged with assault and battery with the intent to kill in August 2007. But those charges were elevated after the investigation began.
Mylee was taken to MUSC for treatment, but died there Aug. 2, 2007. Horry County Coroner Robert Edge said autopsy results showed she died of a closed head injury.
Ferguson’s bond was set Aug. 6, 2007, at $50,000 and he was ordered not to leave the state of Ohio if he posted bond out. The only exceptions to that order were if he had a court appearance in South Carolina or needed to meet with his lawyer.
In December 2007, a grand jury indicted Ferguson on a count of homicide by child abuse.

A few protestors who said they want justice for Mylee also stood outside the courthouse at the beginning of the trial, holding color printed pictures of the baby.
“When you look at the facts of the case, and I’m not going to go into detail on all of that, we are talking about a 5-week-old baby, how could she have done that to her self?” child advocate Kelly Mason asked. “What possibly could be the reason? It’s just not possible if you educate yourself on children and child development and shaken baby syndrome and the kinds of injuries that it caused.
“This is what we are looking at. This child needs people to stand up for her. Kids need someone to talk for them. This baby is 5 weeks-old, and no longer with us. She has no voice, and unfortunately only us to stand for her today,” Mason said.

Hi,

 Just back from a few days away and doing a little digging and who did I dig something up on but Professor Risdon.

Below is an article that says he was involved in a case and the funny thing (not sure this sort of stuff can ever be funny) is that the same name comes up a lot  (of course as he’s the only one of his kind…in more ways than one), but the same thing gets said to…

September 12, 2008 OWEN: MURDERED BABY HAD INJURIES ONLY SEEN IN CAR CRASHES HARINGEY, NORTH LONDON; A 17-month-old boy allegedly murdered by his mother died from a spinal injury normally only seen in a car crash, a court heard today (FRI). Professor Rupert Risdon, a leading paediatric pathologist at the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital, said he had never before seen such damage.

Did you spot it?

Well he has never ever seen such damage…

Hang on…doesn’t he and certain others say that a lot. Could it be it sounds really good to a jury?

Something like ‘well I am an expert (the top and only one of my kind in the country - don’t forget) and in allllllll my years I have NEVER seen anything like this before, ever.

Well not since the last case and other ones after maybe….or is it just me?

Nice line Doc, but you and your friends have crossed it once to many times don’t you think? License up soon…

Maybe now is a good time to go and even though you may genuinely believe you were doing good, you have done people harm and that is simply not on.

The SBS theory you like so much isn’t proved and in a court of law it has to be beyond reasonable doubt (see the link there).

Stop and think. I know you have managed to convince different Juries, and different Police Officers and CPS and the Courts. But things are different now…

Well I never……… 

Study after study shows that juries put a great deal of faith in the testimony of expert witnesses. A good expert witness can often swing a verdict one way or another. But what happens when the expert lies?

What happens when the expert thinks his job is to support the case theory espoused by the side that employs him, regardless of the results of the tests conducted?

Fred Zain was a West Virginia State Police forensics expert who testified in hundreds of criminal cases. He presented himself well. He appeared to know his subject so well that judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys didn’t question the laboratory results Zain said he obtained. Juries believed him. They convicted the defendants when Zain testified that his laboratory conjuring showed they were guilty, even when other evidence conflicted with his testimony, and especially when no other incriminating evidence existed. Fred Zain became something of a forensics “star,” sought after by prosecutors who wanted to win convictions in difficult cases. His stature in West Virginia led to a better job offer, chief of physical evidence for the medical examiner in Bexar County, Texas, and he did for Texas what he had done for West Virginia. He lied.

From all appearances, Fred Zain didn’t set out to repeatedly, almost routinely, commit perjury, and thereby send innocent people to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. In his own defense, Zain has pointed to inadequate facilities, conflicting duties and an overwhelming caseload. All those factors were present. What Zain doesn’t mention is the fact that he was never qualified to be doing forensic lab work in the first place. His college transcripts reveal that Zain was a mediocre scholar who had failed organic chemistry. Apparently no one reviewed Zain’s transcripts before putting him on the job, or before qualifying him as an expert witness. No one looked at his transcripts until the house of cards he had built came tumbling down.

Fred Zain is the victim of his own success. Over the years, Zain rose to the position of Chief of Serology at the West Virginia Department of Public Safety (crime laboratory). What he couldn’t establish in the laboratory was arrived at through a unique form of logic called “backwards reasoning.” If the defendant is guilty, it is likely that … is the predicate for such reasoning. It presumes the defendant’s guilt, and bases its findings on that presumption. But when you add to that presumptive base inadequate facilities, conflicting duties, an overwhelming caseload, and put them in the hands of an unqualified “expert,” you have the prescription for disaster.

The disaster came in the form of Glen Woodall, convicted in 1987 of multiple felonies, including two counts of sexual assault, and sentenced to a prison term of 203 to 335 years. At Woodall’s trial, Zain testified that, based upon his scientific analysis of semen recovered from the victims, “[t]he assailant’s blood types … were identical to Mr. Woodall’s.” Woodall’s conviction was affirmed on appeal, but DNA testing done in a subsequent habeas corpus proceeding established that Woodall could not have been the perpetrator. His conviction was overturned in 1992 and Woodall was freed. Woodall sued the State of West Virginia for false imprisonment, and received $1 million in settlement. This ultimately led to an extraordinary investigation of the entire body of Zain’s work ordered by the West Virginia Supreme Court. The report concluded that the actual guilt of 134 people was substantively in doubt because the convictions were based on inculpatory reports and/or testimony by Zain. Nine men have been freed because the remaining evidence offered against them was insufficient for conviction ~ the expert testimony of Fred Zain alone had put them in prison.

The other key players, the people who facilitated Zain’s fraud, didn’t get it. “I really have no idea why he did what he did,” said Jack Buckalew, a former superintendent of the West Virginia State Police. Kenneth Blake, then-director of the state police’s Criminal Identification Bureau, said he never questioned Zain’s academic background when recommending him for the state police job. Ray Barber, lab chief at the time, said he felt no need to check Zain’s credentials because Zain had a “lab background” as a chemist with the state Department of Natural Resources. In 1985, two fellow lab workers told superiors they had seen Zain record results from blank test plates. Blake looked into the allegations and dismissed them as an office squabble. “They didn’t like Zain, and Zain didn’t like them,” Blake said of that time. “But we never had any complaints from prosecutors, defense attorneys or investigators.”

In 1998, Zain was charged in Hondo, Texas with aggravated perjury, evidence tampering and fabrication connected to the 1990 rape conviction of Gilbert Alejandro. He was acquitted. West Virginia took a kick at the cat with charges that Zain had defrauded the state by accepting his salary and benefits while falsifying evidence and committing perjury. The charges were dismissed in January 1999 by Judge Andrew MacQueen, who found the indictment too vague and ~ appropriately ~ expressed concern about how the law was being applied.

Fred Zain’s actions didn’t take place in a vacuum. The conditions that gave rise to his abuses remain in place in other crime labs and courtrooms across the country. There are no complaints from prosecutors, defense attorneys or investigators, so there isn’t a problem.