An Ontario woman sobbed in court Tuesday morning as she was acquitted in the death of her infant son after more than two decades labelled as his killer.
Jennifer Gaskin pulled her mother into a long and tearful hug after Ontario’s top court found that she had been wrongfully convicted of manslaughter in the death of her 2 1/2-month-old son Joeseph based on now-discredited science.
On her other side stood her daughter, with whom Gaskin was reunited a day earlier for the first time since they were separated by child welfare services a day after Joeseph’s funeral.
Outside the downtown Toronto courthouse, Gaskin said she finally felt free after decades branded as a monster.
“Now that this is over, I’m hoping that I won’t feel like people still look at me that way, because I won’t look at myself that way,” she said. “Now I’m just going to live my best life.”
Though it took a long time, the court eventually “made it right,” she said.
Gaskin’s case is one of several wrongful convictions based on the “discredited” shaken baby syndrome, the Appeal Court said in its ruling.
“She is the victim of a miscarriage of justice,” Justice Peter Lauwers said.
Gaskin was convicted in 2002 after two medical experts testified the child had died as a result of shaken baby syndrome.
Significant concerns about that medical evidence emerged years later as the province examined shaken-baby cases from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, and Gaskin’s legal team eventually retained three more experts to look over the file.
Court heard today the three experts couldn’t rule out the possibility of an inflicted injury, but found Joeseph — a premature baby who spent the first two months of his life in hospital — could also have died from sudden infant death syndrome.
The Crown agreed that the new findings should be admitted as fresh evidence and Gaskin should be acquitted.
In its written submissions, the Crown said the original expert evidence supporting her conviction has been “wholly undermined and placed in grave doubt.”
