Amicus Brief: Leon Reyes
In re Personal Restraint of Leon L. Reyes
Filing Date
May 18, 2021
Charge
Homicide
Jurisdiction
Court of Appeals for the State of Washington Division II
Partners
Innocence Network
Summary
CIFS and the Innocence Network filed this amicus brief in the Court of Appeals of the State of Washington, Division II in Leon Reyes case to argue that the shift in shaken baby syndrome warrants a new trial for Reyes. We note here is material evidence discovered since trial that could not have been discovered before that would likely change the result at a new trial.
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
This case asks the question whether a fundamental change in the medical community’s understanding of a diagnosis central to a Petitioner’s conviction is material new evidence requiring a new trial. At the time of Mr. Leon Reyes’s trial, the prevailing view in the relevant medical community was that injuries sustained by a child like Haydon must have been caused by abusive shaking inflicted by the last person present with the child. That view was so entrenched and unassailable that Mr. Reyes’s defense counsel did not counter it, and even conceded shaking. But since Mr. Reyes’s trial, new studies and analyses published by the medical community demonstrate that the assumptions underlying Mr. Reyes’s conviction are fundamentally flawed, rely on circular reasoning, and cannot “diagnose” abuse. Rather, the symptoms previously thought to be pathognomonic of abuse can have multiple causes and can develop over time. Thus, without a thorough investigation of other possible causes, a “diagnosis” of “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS) (now, more commonly, “abusive head trauma” or “AHT”) is inherently suspect and poses a serious risk of wrongful conviction. This new understanding is material where, as here, an unchallenged “diagnosis” of SBS led directly to conviction.
This Court remanded to the Superior Court for a reference hearing on the question of whether a “paradigm shift” has occurred with respect to SBS. After hearing evidence from both parties, the court below ruled that a paradigm shift has not occurred. CP 29. However, the lower court’s factual findings and its construction of a paradigm shift conflict with this Court’s and many other courts’ interpretation of what constitutes a paradigm shift in the understanding of the SBS/AHT hypothesis and is therefore fatally flawed. More fundamental is the question whether the medical community’s changed understanding since 2007, which undermines SBS “diagnoses,” constitutes material new evidence that renders prior convictions premised on the SBS/AHT hypothesis highly likely to be wrongful. The answer to that question is undoubtedly “yes” and must result in a grant of relief here. To explain that answer. this brief addresses the problem of flawed science in criminal prosecutions, SBS as one example of that flawed science, and the application of the new understanding regarding pediatric head injuries to SBS convictions.