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Yes. Shaking a baby is bad. But a medical expert's evidence led to several women being convicted of murdering either their own children or the babies in their charge (one very prominent case was of a babysitter). That evidence was shown in the end to have been entirely misleading.
In one case, (the babusitter I mentioned) the evidence given was that she must have shook the child so violently and then swung it against the bannister rail of the stair with a force equivalent to a car hitting a stationary object. There was no bruising consistent with this. Nor was any attention paid to several other very important details. It was purely by chance that a doctor watching a programme about it and seeing aphoto of the kiddie in question before he died, noticed his eye drooping slightly and beginning to turn in. Turned out the child had some very serious and undiagnosed health problems. There was no violence involved in his death. It was just a tragic situation.
The same doctor who insisted that this child's injuries were consistent with the kind of injuries 'expected' in 'shaken baby syndrome' has also provided the mostdamning evidence in other cases involving mothers whose children had died of cot death. he was insistent that actually they were shaken to death. He has even made suggestions to the effect that most cot-deaths are in fact abuse.
Hiss was a very prominent case and I believe he has been struck off now as a medical practitioner. His evidence was not just inadequate it was in some cases actually dishonest. But...he was an expert witness. The fact he'd been an expert witness in so many cases only served to increase his prestige until the miscarriages of justice began to come to light. He was an expert witness, and on the basis primarily of his evidence juries convicted several women of murder, including some who'd actually lost their baby to cot death and were still grieving.
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