As a two-day hearing aimed at proving Russell Maze’s innocence concluded Wednesday, a family member pulled Russell’s wife, Kaye, aside to offer words of support: “He’s a free man.”
Still, the family must wait for a ruling from Judge Steve Dozier to find out whether those words of support are true.
Russell Maze has been in prison for 25 years, serving a life sentence for killing his son, Alex, deemed a victim of “shaken baby syndrome” by doctors and a jury at the time.
But attorneys for the Mazes and the Davidson County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit argued before Judge Steve Dozier this week that no one abused Alex and that Russell should be set free.
Radiologists consulted by the attorneys on Wednesday left little room for doubt.
The case “does not have any direct evidence” of trauma, Dr. Julie Mack, a radiologist at Penn State said. There are “absolutely” other possibilities than “shaken baby syndrome,” she added, stating that the medical investigation conducted by doctors at the time “doesn’t hold weight anymore.”
Dr. Lawrence Hutchins, a retired neuroradiologist who spent more than two decades on the child abuse team at the Marshfield Medical Center in Wisconsin, said Alex “did not suffer inflicted trauma or accidental trauma.”
The chances that Alex’s condition was the result of trauma, Hutchins said, are “as close to zero as you will get in medicine.”
Also testifying Wednesday was Kristen Vanderkooi, a former Metro Nashville Police Detective who investigated the Maze case. She said that her investigation relied on conclusions made by medical professionals at the hospital — conclusions deemed faulty by the experts who followed her. Vanderkooi, now an attorney, said in an affidavit that the police investigation “would have been broader” if other medical possibilities had been acknowledged by doctors at the time.
The radiologists presented several.
Specifically, Hutchins said a birth-related subdural hematoma was “far and away” the most likely cause of Alex’s condition, meaning preexisting medical conditions, not child abuse, were to blame. “Nobody really knew how common this was” at the time, Hutchins said, citing research from the past decade showing that between a third and half of births can experience birth-related subdural hematoma.
If trauma had been the cause of Alex’s brain condition, modern doctors would expect to see primary traumatic brain injuries beyond the bleeding present.
“In Alex’s case, you expected lots of them, and he had not one,” Hutchins said. “Not a single one.”
“There are much more likely and plausible explanations,” he added.
Dozier appeared less convinced, probing attorneys about the thoroughness of their expert witness roster. Without an adversarial party — the DA’s office responsible for prosecuting the case is actively seeking Maze’s release — Dozier wondered whether other medical experts could reach a different conclusion.
The judge did not issue a ruling from the bench, instead saying he would reach a conclusion “as efficiently as possible.”
Russell Maze, wearing a pale blue prison uniform, a cross necklace and his wedding ring, stood up with the help of a cane and shuffled out the side door to await the ruling as Kaye Maze greeted family members and spoke to the attorneys.
“The state got this wrong,” Sunny Eaton, director of the Conviction Review Unit, said in closing. “We have an ethical obligation to do the only right thing going forward.”