Angelique Howard holds her 20-month-old son Draven. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

        Draven Howard doesn't see very well. He takes two pills a day to avoid seizures. At 22 months old, he still needs help to walk — and his potential for learning is uncertain. After seven hours of deliberations, a Butler County jury Tuesday decided Draven's father was to blame.

        The jury acquitted James Neil Howard of shaking his son violently on April 1, 2000, when the child had life-threatening breathing problems.

        But the jury did convict him on a felony child-endangering charge for shaking the child three days later.

        Last week's split decision underscores the difficulties of diagnosing, investigating and prosecuting cases of suspected “shaken baby syndrome,” 30 years after the term was first used.

        The Howard case spawned spirited local debate, but it lacked the national reach of the 1997 case of Louise Woodward, the British au pair convicted in the “shaken baby” death of an 8-month-old Massachusetts boy.

        Still, the issues are the same:

        • What type of injuries did the child sustain?

        • How could they have been caused — or by whom?

        • When did they happen?

        “What makes these cases so complicated is they're medical mysteries,” said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a lawyer who worked on the Woodward case and more than 100 other “shaken baby” cases.

        “There is just so much about head and eye injuries that science cannot yet explain. That's one thing that makes it so difficult to sort out what really happened in many of these cases.”

        Craig Hedric, a Butler County assistant prosecutor on the case, said he felt the testimony of the doctors from Children's Hospital Medical Center was consistent and strong. He described the jury as patient, attentive and intelligent, adding, “they took a lot of notes.”

        Mr. Hedric said the medical evidence in shaken baby cases is complex, the victim can't talk and there are usually no witnesses.

        Besides, he said, “No one wants to think a parent could do this to their own child.”

        Michael Shanks, Mr. Howard's lawyer, countered: “I think people in the back of their minds believe, well, he must have done something or he wouldn't be accused.

        “A child has been hurt. People are upset. That's understandable,” he said. “But I think we should be very careful before we make decisions about criminality of conduct based upon, in essence, medical opinions of doctors, who are human and fallible, even if well-meaning.”

        A juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the jury of eight men and four women went about their task “methodically.”

        “It was a very professional group of individuals who looked at the facts,” he said.

        The jury performed its civic duty as best it could, he said, adding, “Nobody's happy to be rendering such a decision.”
       

A difficult birth
               Mr. Howard and his wife, Angelique, maintained throughout the trial — and for more than a year preceding it — that Draven may have suffered escalating medical problems following a difficult birth.

        Forceps and a vacuum device caused injuries to the outside of his head. So the Howards wondered: Could Draven's birth have caused internal head injuries, and did those injuries worsen over time and mimic abuse?

        During Mr. Howard's six-day trial, testimony showed Draven suffered some bleeding inside his head that went undetected for weeks, possibly months.

        No doctor explained how that bleeding happened. Some conceded it could have dated back to the birth. Regardless, doctors from Children's Hospital Medical Center said that it was medically insignificant.

        Dr. Robert C. Cantu, a neurosurgery chief in Massachusetts for more than 30 years, disagreed.

        Dr. Cantu was hired by the Butler County Children Services Board to offer a second medical opinion in the case.

        He said said Draven obviously suffered a head injury that caused his brain to shrink prior to the dates Mr. Howard was accused of hurting his son.

        Dr. Cantu also said that newer injuries, which showed up on X-ray-like films of the child's head on April 4-5, 2000, involved “trivial” amounts of blood. Older injuries, he said, made the child vulnerable to more injury from very little or no impact.

        A number of those findings were “atypical” for shaken baby syndrome, he said.

        Doctors from Children's Hospital gave an opposing view: Draven suffered non-accidental brain and eye injuries that changed him forever on or around April 4, 2000, they said.

        In the end, the jury concluded medical evidence strongly indicated abuse on April 4, 2000.

        “It just wasn't there,” on April 1, the juror said.

        Tests cannot show doctors precisely when head and eye injuries happen. But doctors from Children's said the child would cease normal behavior right after the injuries were inflicted.

        On the morning of April 4, 2000, Mrs. Howard had gone to work then called her husband, the juror recalled.

        “Her testimony indicated the baby was all right, and she heard the baby cooing in the background,” he said, “and then you have an emergency.”

        Mr. Howard, 28, who continued protesting his innocence while he was handcuffed, is being held in the county jail. He has no known previous history of violence.

        He will be sentenced Dec. 20. He turned down two plea-bargain offers, but now faces up to eight years in prison.

        Meanwhile, his wife has temporary custody of Draven. She goes to court Tuesday to fight to keep him.
       

Searching for reform
               Mrs. Howard watches Draven crawl, walk with his hand on the couch and grab visitors' keys. She fears she never will really know what happened to the brown-eyed boy who closely resembles his father.

        Despite the guilty verdict, Butler County Commissioner Michael A. Fox, a longtime advocate for reform of the county's child-protection system, said the Howard case provides a blueprint for needed changes.

        “In this case, three of the original four charges were either dismissed or rejected. What it illustrates is that the first impressions of the authorities were not accurate,” Mr. Fox said.

        “So you have to be constantly open to new information and looking at old information in a new light,” he said.

        “The real significance of the Howard case for the whole system has been, hopefully, to create a culture where that happens routinely. Up until now, it hasn't been.”

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