As Texas prepares to put a man to death in what would be the United States’s first execution tied to the diagnosis of “shaken baby syndrome,” Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno—a death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center—explains to The Washington Post why the courts are unlikely to grant a post-conviction appeal.
In theory, post-conviction appeals can serve as a fail-safe that allows the court system to reckon with past errors and avoid wrongful execution. In practice, the courts are rarely so nimble — or willing, according to death-penalty researcher and Fordham law professor Deborah Denno.
For pragmatic reasons, courts are concerned that opening the door to one challenge could lead to a cascade of challenges to cases determined using old science that, at one point, was widely accepted.
“It’s why courts are so loath to start going down this path,” Denno said. “If you start with shaken baby syndrome evidence, next you can look at fingerprint evidence, or any array of scientific evidence that was accepted before.”
Then there’s the gap between a jury’s conviction and a defendant’s execution — an average of 18.9 years, according to 2020 figures from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
“By the time defendants come up for execution, we can see all the problems with these cases,” Denno said.
Read “Texas man faces execution despite doubts over shaken baby syndrome” in The Washington Post.