In 1997, a two-year-old boy collapsed on the floor of his bedroom in Biloxi, Mississippi. His stepmother, Tasha Shelby, called for help. By the time the sun came up, she was the prime suspect. By the time the trial ended, she had a life sentence.

Tasha was twenty-two. Twelve days postpartum. Engaged to be married. The only adult in the house the night Bryan collapsed. The case against her rested on a single diagnosis, Shaken Baby Syndrome, delivered by the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.

Decades on, that same medical examiner has taken the stand again, under oath, to say he got it wrong. The certainty that once surrounded the diagnosis has been picked apart in courtrooms across the world. Hundreds of people convicted on the same theory have walked free.

Tasha has not.

Recorded from inside Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, this is her story in her own words. The thump in the night, the newborn daughter taken from her arms,the trial and the expert recantation.

What happens when the expert says they got it wrong?

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In the 1990s and early 2000s, Shaken Baby Syndrome was considered unshakeable medical fact. When doctors found three specific symptoms—subdural bleeding, retinal hemorrhages, and brain swelling—the diagnosis was automatic: someone had violently shaken a baby to death.

Two women's lives were destroyed by this "certainty."

Tasha Shelby was 25 years old when she was convicted of murdering her fiancé's two-year-old son. Just two weeks after giving birth by emergency C-section, prosecutors claimed this 4'9" woman had shaken 33-pound Bryan Thompson with the force of a car crash. Her trial lasted two days. Her sentence: life without parole.

Marsha Mills was a 55-year-old grandmother caring for neighbourhood children when two-year-old Noah Shoup died in her care. Despite her spotless record and the family's trust, medical testimony sent her to prison for life based on the same three symptoms.

Neither woman had any history of violence. Neither had any other evidence against them except the testimony of medical experts who claimed absolute certainty.

But that certainty was built on a foundation of sand.

From prison, both women tell their stories to host Jack Laurence in this groundbreaking investigation into how flawed science can destroy innocent lives.

Through exclusive interviews with Valena E. Beety—professor of law at Arizona State University, deputy director of the Academy for Justice, and Tasha's attorney—we uncover how the medical establishment's false confidence railroaded families through the courts.

Professor Keith Findley of the University of Wisconsin Law School, co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project and co-author of the definitive Cambridge University Press book "Shaken Baby Syndrome: Investigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy," reveals how modern science has shattered the assumptions that sent these women to prison.

The science was wrong. The convictions were wrong. But the women remain behind bars.

Across America, 34 people have been exonerated from Shaken Baby Syndrome convictions as courts slowly recognise the diagnosis is unreliable. Yet Tasha and Marsha—despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence—have exhausted their appeals and face dying in prison for crimes that may never have happened.

Unshakeable Science exposes how medical arrogance, prosecutorial certainty, and judicial inertia have created a system where admitting error is harder than perpetuating injustice.

When the science breaks down, who pays the price?

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In 1997, a two-year-old boy collapsed on the floor of his bedroom in Biloxi, Mississippi. His stepmother, Tasha Shelby, called for help. By the time the sun came up, she was the prime suspect. By the time the trial ended, she had a life sentence.

Tasha was twenty-two. Twelve days postpartum. Engaged to be married. The only adult in the house the night Bryan collapsed. The case against her rested on a single diagnosis, Shaken Baby Syndrome, delivered by the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.

Decades on, that same medical examiner has taken the stand again, under oath, to say he got it wrong. The certainty that once surrounded the diagnosis has been picked apart in courtrooms across the world. Hundreds of people convicted on the same theory have walked free.

Tasha has not.

Recorded from inside Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, this is her story in her own words. The thump in the night, the newborn daughter taken from her arms,the trial and the expert recantation.

What happens when the expert says they got it wrong?

EARLY AND AD FREE ACCESS: for as little as $1.69 a week!

Apple + HERE

Patreon and find us on Facebook here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you hear that someone has been handed a sentence of life plus 104 years you'd be forgiven for thinking that today I am sitting down with some sort of serial killer, or someone who has committed some incredibly heinous crimes but you'd be wrong.

Brad Hays is currently serving his incredible sentence in the state of Missouri. Brad is no career criminal, in fact up until this sentence he had never been to prison. Brad Hays did not kill anyone, he wasn't even present when someone was killed, in fact no one died at all in Brad's case but none the less he has been unable to get any relife in his case.

Today I catch up with Brad to see whats been happening in the world of the Missouri DOC, the disaster that is the lack of health care, officers accused of committing murder, the rise in the drug K2 and where he's at with trying to get a reduction in his sentence.

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Susan Brown was thirty weeks pregnant when her estranged husband attacked her. She says he beat her, raped her, and stabbed her in the stomach. She fought back. She woke in a hospital bed with a baby born devastatingly premature, and learned her ex-husband was dead.

Susan was charged with first degree murder. The law that now protects Michigan women defending themselves during a sexual assault did not exist in 2004. She was sentenced to life without parole.

Twenty years on, Susan is an internationally exhibited artist, a mentor, a conflict mediator, and a leading voice for second look legislation in her state. A clemency package was submitted to Governor Whitmer in August 2022. Her 2024 commutation hearing did not result in release.

In this check in, I catch up with Susan on life inside Huron Valley, where her case sits now, and the hope she still carries for Governor Whitmer's final term in office.

If you would like to support Susan, letters to the Governor's office make a real difference.

Write to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, P.O. Box 30013, Lansing, Michigan 48909, USA. Reference MDOC

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A child takes the stand. They describe what they saw in vivid detail. They are consistent, they are convincing, and the jury believes them. But how much of what they are saying actually happened -- and how much of it was shaped by the questions they were asked, the adults they trusted, and a memory that was never as fixed as anyone assumed?

In this episode, we sit down with Dr Ben Francis Cotterill, lecturer in psychology at Clemson University and one of the leading researchers in the field of child eyewitness testimony. His work examines the gap between what children genuinely remember and what the justice system asks them to do with those memories -- and that gap, the research tells us, can be significant.

We take you through the science of how children's memories form and how they can be altered -- sometimes dramatically -- through suggestion, leading questions, and repeated interviewing. We look at why the authority of an adult in a room with a child can reshape what that child believes they witnessed. And we examine the uncomfortable truth that some of the most well-intentioned interview techniques used in abuse investigations have been shown to increase the risk of false reporting rather than reduce it.

This is not a conversation about doubting children. It is a conversation about understanding them and about asking hard questions of a justice system that has not always asked those questions of itself.

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We just wrapped up the story of Kara Garvin, sentenced to life without parole for a crime she says she didn't commit, we have heard her version of events and explored the case against her but now it's time to get the opinion of the man they call 'The Voice of Reason' a man with over 30 years experience as a criminal defence attorney from Chicago Illinois, it is Michael Leonard.

Kara Garvin grew up in Franklin Furnace, Ohio, a small, tight-knit community nestled along the Ohio River, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where the OxyContin crisis of the early 2000s didn't just make the news, it moved in next door. Like so many in her community, Kara's life became entangled with addiction. And like so many, that entanglement would come to define how the world saw her.

On the evening of the 22nd of December 2008, three days before Christmas, Edward Mollett, his wife Juanita, and their daughter Christina were shot and killed inside their mobile home in Franklin Furnace. A six year old boy, covered in blood, ran down the hill to a neighbour's house for help. Within hours, Kara Garvin had voluntarily walked into the Scioto County Sheriff's Office. By morning, she was facing three counts of aggravated murder.

She has never stopped saying she didn't do it.

In this series, I sit down with Kara inside the prison where she has spent the last sixteen years of her life. We go back to the beginning — her childhood, her struggles, the community that shaped her — and we walk, step by step, through the night of the 22nd of December, the investigation that followed, and the trial that put her away. We examine the state's case, the evidence, the witnesses, and the questions that Kara says have never been adequately answered.

Three people lost their lives that night. A family was destroyed. A six year old boy saw things no child should ever see. Those facts are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is who pulled the trigger.

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Kara Garvin grew up in Franklin Furnace, Ohio, a small, tight-knit community nestled along the Ohio River, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where the OxyContin crisis of the early 2000s didn't just make the news, it moved in next door. Like so many in her community, Kara's life became entangled with addiction. And like so many, that entanglement would come to define how the world saw her.

On the evening of the 22nd of December 2008, three days before Christmas, Edward Mollett, his wife Juanita, and their daughter Christina were shot and killed inside their mobile home in Franklin Furnace. A six year old boy, covered in blood, ran down the hill to a neighbour's house for help. Within hours, Kara Garvin had voluntarily walked into the Scioto County Sheriff's Office. By morning, she was facing three counts of aggravated murder.

She has never stopped saying she didn't do it.

In this series, I sit down with Kara inside the prison where she has spent the last sixteen years of her life. We go back to the beginning — her childhood, her struggles, the community that shaped her — and we walk, step by step, through the night of the 22nd of December, the investigation that followed, and the trial that put her away. We examine the state's case, the evidence, the witnesses, and the questions that Kara says have never been adequately answered.

Three people lost their lives that night. A family was destroyed. A six year old boy saw things no child should ever see. Those facts are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is who pulled the trigger.

EARLY AND AD FREE ACCESS: for as little as $1.69 a week!

Apple + HERE

Patreon and find us on Facebook here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kara Garvin grew up in Franklin Furnace, Ohio, a small, tight-knit community nestled along the Ohio River, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where the OxyContin crisis of the early 2000s didn't just make the news, it moved in next door. Like so many in her community, Kara's life became entangled with addiction. And like so many, that entanglement would come to define how the world saw her.

On the evening of the 22nd of December 2008, three days before Christmas, Edward Mollett, his wife Juanita, and their daughter Christina were shot and killed inside their mobile home in Franklin Furnace. A six year old boy, covered in blood, ran down the hill to a neighbour's house for help. Within hours, Kara Garvin had voluntarily walked into the Scioto County Sheriff's Office. By morning, she was facing three counts of aggravated murder.

She has never stopped saying she didn't do it.

In this series, I sit down with Kara inside the prison where she has spent the last sixteen years of her life. We go back to the beginning — her childhood, her struggles, the community that shaped her — and we walk, step by step, through the night of the 22nd of December, the investigation that followed, and the trial that put her away. We examine the state's case, the evidence, the witnesses, and the questions that Kara says have never been adequately answered.

Three people lost their lives that night. A family was destroyed. A six year old boy saw things no child should ever see. Those facts are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is who pulled the trigger.

EARLY AND AD FREE ACCESS: for as little as $1.69 a week!

Apple + HERE

Patreon and find us on Facebook here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kara Garvin grew up in Franklin Furnace, Ohio, a small, tight-knit community nestled along the Ohio River, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where the OxyContin crisis of the early 2000s didn't just make the news, it moved in next door. Like so many in her community, Kara's life became entangled with addiction. And like so many, that entanglement would come to define how the world saw her.

On the evening of the 22nd of December 2008, three days before Christmas, Edward Mollett, his wife Juanita, and their daughter Christina were shot and killed inside their mobile home in Franklin Furnace. A six year old boy, covered in blood, ran down the hill to a neighbour's house for help. Within hours, Kara Garvin had voluntarily walked into the Scioto County Sheriff's Office. By morning, she was facing three counts of aggravated murder.

She has never stopped saying she didn't do it.

In this series, I sit down with Kara inside the prison where she has spent the last sixteen years of her life. We go back to the beginning — her childhood, her struggles, the community that shaped her — and we walk, step by step, through the night of the 22nd of December, the investigation that followed, and the trial that put her away. We examine the state's case, the evidence, the witnesses, and the questions that Kara says have never been adequately answered.

Three people lost their lives that night. A family was destroyed. A six year old boy saw things no child should ever see. Those facts are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is who pulled the trigger.

EARLY AND AD FREE ACCESS: for as little as $1.69 a week!

Apple + HERE

Patreon and find us on Facebook here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.