The previous post began to discuss some of the back story around the man discussed in a recent post who recently had his 60-year prison sentence for a conviction of child sexual abuse and murder voided by the appeals court in his state. The appeals court voided the conviction because they said his original attorney did not do enough to challenge the medical evidence presented by prosecutors.

In the last couple of decades, the classic signs and symptoms of child abuse, such as "shaken baby syndrome," have come to be seen by many as less of a given because other diseases have been found to present symptoms that can resemble trauma or child abuse.

An ongoing and fascinating investigation by ProPublica and NPR has looked into two dozen cases where parents or caregivers were wrongfully accused and/or convicted of causing a child's death through abuse. These wrongful convictions occurred because the evidence collected during an autopsy of the child was faulty or misinterpreted due to lack of experience or expertise.

In the case of the Texas man, new experts for the defense will testify in his new trial that the baby more likely died of a blood disorder than from child abuse. Other people highlighted in the ProPublica piece who were convicted but later released from prison include a Mississippi man who was falsely accused of killing his ex-girlfriend's daughter because a coroner misinterpreted marks on the child's body.

Source: ProPublica, "The Hardest Cases: When Children Die, Justice Can Be Elusive," A.C. Thompson and Chisun Lee of ProPublica and Joe Shapiro and Sandra Bartlett of NPR, June 27, 2011