CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — There is no such thing as Shaken Baby Syndrome, claims the defense in the trial of a Marine charged with killing his 2-month-old daughter in his Ishikawa apartment in January.
During the first day of the general court-martial of Lance Cpl. James J. Boston, 22, his attorney, Lt. Col. David Jones, said he would produce expert medical testimony refuting that violently shaking a baby can alone cause severe brain injuries and death.
"Science has shown that one cannot shake a baby and cause such damage without some sort of impact," Jones said during his opening statement Monday. He said the issue of whether a baby can be shaken so hard that it can cause such damage to the brain — without the baby’s neck being broken or the skull fractured by a forceful impact — was a "controversial and complicated" issue in the medical community.
"It’s never been shown a human being can cause enough force to cause that kind of an injury," Jones said. "To this day it has never been proven."
Capt. Paul Ervasti, lead prosecutor in the case, said experts will testify that injuries to Tahirah Boston on Jan. 28 were consistent to what has become accepted as Shaken Baby Syndrome. Of 27 witnesses scheduled to be called to testify in the case, 15 are medical professionals.
Boston, of the 7th Communications Battalion on Camp Hansen, was arrested Feb. 6 after admitting to investigators he shook his daughter lightly in an attempt to get her to start breathing. He told them he found the baby asleep on her stomach in her crib and not breathing.
Jones said Tahirah had been dropped on the floor by Boston when she was 2 ½ weeks old and seemed lethargic in the weeks that followed. She might have suffered brain damaged then, but neither Boston nor his fiancee, Lance Cpl. Eltrena Johnson, the baby’s mother, had taken the girl to a doctor, he said.
"They said she seemed normal most of the time," Jones told the jury panel of nine officers, all male. He asked them to consider the baby’s parents young age and "lack of sophistication" as an excuse for why they did not get medical help sooner.
He said Boston had on at least two occasions leading up to the Jan. 28 incident given "modified CPR" to the baby to get her to breathe normally.
Ervasti said the baby’s injuries — massive bleeding inside the skull, broken ribs and retinal hemorrhage — were recent and could only have been caused by violent shaking. He said Boston knew shaking the baby could cause severe injuries because he watched two videos on the subject before Tahirah was allowed to be released from the hospital after she was born.
One of the videos was played as prosecution evidence Monday afternoon. The video did not suggest that Shaken Baby Syndrome was a disputed diagnosis or controversial.
Ervasti said the incident occurred the first day Boston had watched the baby alone after Johnson’s maternity leave ended and she went back to work. Boston had a neighbor call local paramedics who rushed Tahirah to Chubu Hospital, where she was placed on life support.
The baby was later transported to the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, where she died several days later.
