Markese Clark

Soon after, Mr. Clark and his two young children moved in with her and her three children.

On January 2, 2013, Ericka worked all day. When she got home, she noticed that her youngest son, three-year-old King, was unusually tired and struggling with his balance. 

The next morning, January 3, 2013, Ericka went to work. The children remained at home with Mr. Clark. At 11:00 a.m., Clark called Ericka and said that King had fallen and was being rushed to the hospital. 

He had been throwing King into the air, and on the last time, King fell back when Mr. Clark put him down, landing straight on his back and  head. He picked him up, and King threw up, dirtying himself and Mr. Clark’s shirt. 

He took King to the bathroom, where he stripped him, put him into the tub, and washed him with cold water. Clark did not see King hit his head in the tub. After washing him, Clark took him upstairs and dressed him. That was when Clark noticed King was unresponsive. He ran downstairs with King and called 911, telling the operator that King “had hit his head.” 

When a responding paramedic arrived, King was not breathing, and his heart was not beating. Doctors attempted to drain the fluid that had accumulated on his brain, but his neurologic function didn't improve. He was taken off of  life support on January 17, and two days later died. 

A jury found Clark guilty of assault on a child causing death, which is commonly known as child assault homicide. The jury found Clark not guilty of murder but guilty of the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter. On October 21, 2016, the trial court sentenced Clark to 25 years to life.

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), coined in the 1970s, refers to the hypothesis that one can diagnose shaking or abuse in an infant even when no external injuries are present. This diagnosis depends on a “triad” of symptoms: brain bleeding, brain swelling, and retinal bleeding. When this “triad” is present -- and even sometimes when just one or two symptoms are present -- doctors are encouraged to diagnose SBS.

A crucial second part of this diagnosis is the proposition that the condition appears immediately after the child is shaken. This implicates the last person seen with the child unequivocally as the perpetrator of this supposed violence -- as in Mr. Clark's case. 

The actual research conducted by legal and medical scholars has concluded that “this hypothesis fits poorly with the anatomy and physiology of the infant brain.” There are, in fact, many natural and accidental causes for brain swelling, bleeding, and retinal bleeding (short falls, strokes, and several diseases, etc.) Further, there is not a single documented case in which abusive shaking has been directly observed and the “triad” discovered after.

Conversely, studies using biofidelic dummies have found that any shaking extreme enough to produce this “triad”would also produce damage to the vertebra and bruises to the trunk,  but these signs have never been observed in an SBS case.