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Jennifer Gaskin, right, stands outside court in Toronto with her mother Barbara Levesque. Ms. Gaskin spent 18 months in prison after her conviction in 2002.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Ontario Court of Appeal has quashed a decades-old manslaughter conviction of a young mother they now say was wrongfully convicted for the “shaken baby” death of her infant son.
Jennifer Gaskin broke into sobs after being granted an acquittal in a Toronto courtroom Tuesday morning.
“I feel wonderful. I feel lighter. I feel like years and years have been taken off my life right now,” the now-51-year-old told reporters outside the courthouse Tuesday morning, following the hearing.
The Crown and defence had submitted jointly to the court that Ms. Gaskin’s conviction – for the death of her son Joeseph, in July, 1999 – should be overturned, and an acquittal entered in its place.
Appeal Justices Sally Gomery, Peter Lauwers and Renee Pomerance agreed.
As he delivered their decision Tuesday, Justice Lauwers acknowledged that Ms. Gaskin had been a victim of a miscarriage of justice as the result of “discredited” science. He expressed “profound regret” to her and her family for what she endured.
Ms. Gaskin spent 18 months in prison after her conviction by a jury trial in Kenora, Ont., in 2002. Her surviving children – a daughter, just 14 months at the time that her baby brother died, and a son who was born while Ms. Gaskin was on bail, awaiting trial – were taken from her.
Her case is the latest in a decades-long effort by the justice system to undo the damage caused by the now widely contested forensic theory of shaken baby syndrome (SBS).
The term was first coined in the early 1970s and became a go-to diagnosis for pathologists probing baby deaths in cases where infants had a combination of brain swelling, retinal bleeding and tissue damage to the brain lining.
But it came under scrutiny in the early 2000s, when some experts began to dispute the validity of the diagnosis and raise concerns that it had led to wrongful convictions.