Smith v. State

Danyel Smith was convicted in 2003 of felony murder and aggravated battery after his two-month-old son Chandler died, based on a diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome. Years later, Smith asked the trial court for a new trial, arguing that medical science about infant head injuries has changed dramatically and that new expert analysis shows Chandler's death had other causes. The Supreme Court of Georgia had already sent the case back once for a hearing, which the trial court held, hearing from eight defense experts and two state experts over six days. The trial court again denied Smith's motion, in an order drafted by the prosecution, finding Smith had not shown the evidence was newly discovered, that he was diligent in bringing it forward, or that it was material. On this second appeal, the Supreme Court of Georgia found the trial court applied the wrong legal standards on all three points and sent the case back again for the trial court to redo its analysis correctly.

The trial court must evaluate whether new expert evidence was unknown to the defendant, whether he was diligent given the unique nature of evolving scientific knowledge, and whether a reasonable juror, not the judge, would find the new evidence material by weighing it against the trial evidence; because the trial court instead substituted its own credibility judgments, its order must be vacated and the case sent back for proper analysis.

The ruling clarifies how Georgia trial courts must evaluate extraordinary motions for new trial based on evolving scientific understanding, guiding future cases involving shaken baby diagnoses and other science-based convictions, and gives Smith another chance at a proper hearing on his claim of innocence.

Vacated and remanded

1. The court explained that an extraordinary motion for new trial (a request filed after the normal deadline, based on newly discovered evidence) requires the defendant to prove six things, including that the evidence was unknown at trial, could not have been found sooner with diligence, and is material enough to probably change the verdict.
2. On the 'newly discovered' factor, the court found the trial judge wrongly focused on whether the state's original trial experts had used a flawed diagnosis, rather than on whether Smith's new expert opinions specifically were unknown to him at the time of his 2003 trial.
3. On the diligence factor, the court held the trial judge wrongly treated general, decades-old criticism of Shaken Baby Syndrome as equivalent to the specific new expert analysis Smith presented, and failed to recognize that scientific evidence often only becomes solid enough to rely on well after a theory first emerges, so a defendant may reasonably wait until confident in it before filing.
4. On the materiality factor, meaning whether the new evidence would probably have changed the verdict, the court held the trial judge improperly decided for himself which side's experts were more believable, when the correct question is whether a reasonable juror, weighing the new evidence against everything presented at the original trial, would probably have reached a different result.
5. Because the trial court's order rested on the wrong legal framework for each of these three factors, the Supreme Court of Georgia vacated the denial and sent the case back so the trial court could redo the analysis correctly.

• Shaken Baby Syndrome
• extraordinary motion for new trial
• newly discovered evidence
• expert testimony
• felony murder conviction