#5: A Faulty Trial

In the video “The Child Cases,” it talks about sudden child deaths often assumed to be murder by the last caregiver. A reporter interviews a woman named Monea Tyson. She was accused of her son’s murder. Tyson stated that she found her son unresponsive and called 911. A man named Dr. Shrode performed the autopsy and found that the child died from multiple blunt force traumas. Tyson told the reporter than she it was hard to live with the accusation because she knew she wasn’t guilty. Several trials took place and eventually they found that her son had died from an infection. It was reported that the places where Dr. Shrode had reported blunt force trauma were birth marks.

The reporter interviewed Dr. Thogmartin, a Chief medical examiner, and he stated that he reversed two child cases handled by his predecessors. He stated that they had imagined damages, and they get caught up in the anger, emotion and despair. He said it’s always homicide unless proven otherwise. The reporter also interviewed a Defense Attorney named Tony Axam. He stated that in baby cases they are approached in a different manner. If the caregiver said she did not hurt the child but there is no evidence to prove otherwise then it must be the caregivers fault.

I think when handle cases where emotion, despair and anger can play a big role, there should be a view point from a few professionals rather than one. Why was Monea’s case driven by one doctor’s autopsy when later on he was fired for malpractice? It should not be based on one person’s perspective. Pinning a child murder on a person is a big deal. That can ruin a person’s life even though they are not guilty. There should be set regulations on the autopsy’s and I think that the result of an autopsy can be biased depending on the person performing it. If the doctor, in his mind, thought that the baby was murdered then I believe it will affect his work, just like the cases Dr. Thogmartin’s predecessors took.