CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — There was no doubt in the minds of the doctors testifying in the second day of the court-martial of a Marine charged with killing his daughter.
Lance Cpl. James J. Boston’s 2-month-old daughter, they all agreed Tuesday, died of a traumatic head injury caused by violent shaking.
Testifying for the prosecution, five doctors said the child had massive bleeding inside her skull, brain damage, retinal bleeding and eight cracked ribs — injuries that were consistent with what has become known as shaken baby syndrome.
Two of the witnesses were Navy doctors who examined Tahirah Boston on Okinawa immediately after the Jan. 28 incident. A Navy doctor who treated the girl in San Diego, and two forensic pathologists from the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office, also testified.
And, although the doctors who performed the autopsy say they do not use the term shaken baby syndrome, they both said the death was a homicide and the injuries could only have been caused by violent shaking.
They discounted defense claims that the death could have been caused by injuries that occurred weeks earlier and went unnoticed or untreated.
Boston, assigned to the 7th Communication Battalion on Camp Hansen, was caring for Tahirah alone on Jan. 28 while her mother, his fiancee, returned to work after her maternity leave. It was the first time Boston watched the girl by himself. Early that afternoon, he later told investigators, he noticed the girl was lying on her stomach and not breathing.
She was rushed to a hospital in Ishikawa, where she was resuscitated but remained in a coma.
During his opening statement Monday, Lt. Col. David Jones, Boston’s attorney, said he would put other doctors on the stand who will refute shaken baby syndrome as a diagnosis and talk about how other health concerns and accidental injuries might have caused the baby’s brain trauma and broken ribs.
According to Jones’ opening statement and a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent who testified Monday, Boston changed his story about what happened to his daughter several times. At first, Boston said he found his daughter on her stomach and not breathing. Later, he said he had accidentally dropped her several weeks earlier and she appeared lethargic leading up to the Jan. 28 incident.
He later said he bumped Tahirah’s head on his apartment’s doorjamb when he rushed to a neighbor’s house to call for an ambulance.
Jones also contends the child’s ribs could have been broken when Boston tried to perform CPR on her.
But the fractures were "consistent with child abuse" and not in the locations where someone would apply pressure to resuscitate, said Dr, Jonathan Lucas, a forensic pathologist and deputy medical examiner for San Diego County. While in a coma, Tahirah was flown to the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, where she died Feb. 10 after being disconnected from life support. Boston has been in the Camp Foster brig since.
Lucas said the injuries were typical of rapid "acceleration-deceleration," or shaking.
Babies are prone to such injuries because their heads are soft, relatively large and heavy, making up about 25 percent of their body weight. Dr. Diana Wiseman, a neurosurgeon at U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa who examined Tahirah the day of the incident, likened a baby’s brain to Jell-O.
"If you shake it violently the whole Jell-O mold basically starts to deteriorate," she said.
According to the National Center for Shaken Baby Syndrome, there is no central reporting registry collecting data on such injuries, but it is estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 shaken baby incidents are reported each year in the U.S. About a quarter of the cases result in death.
In 2007 the Department of Defense launched a campaign to educate military families about shaken baby syndrome, announcing that 10 to 20 infant deaths across the military community occur each year.
Boston’s court-martial is expected to last through Friday.
