An Augusta woman who spent more than a decade in prison is back home after prosecutors heard testimony this week that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred, highlighting how Georgia courts are continuing to catch up on what’s increasingly seen as junk science: shaken baby syndrome.
Mary Katherine Smith, who goes by Katie, was seeking a new trial, arguing that advances in medical science have produced new evidence in the shaken-baby death of her 2-year-old son, Tucker. Several medical experts testified over two days that Tucker’s 2014 death is now understood to have resulted from undiagnosed epilepsy.
Prosecutors then offered Smith a time-served Alford plea, allowing her to plead guilty but maintain her innocence to second-degree murder, said Southern Center for Human Rights Attorney Paulina Lucio-Maymon…