While Del Prete has finally found justice, there are potentially hundreds of other similar prosecutions yet to be reexamined. The Wisconsin Innocence Project told the press that at least 19 cases relying solely on SBS have been overturned in recent years. Professor Carrie Sperling, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said that this is likely a low estimate because these cases can be difficult to track. Sperling and her team are currently representing Jennifer Hancock—a woman convicted in 2009 for causing the death of 4-month-old Lincoln Wilber—in an appeal to overturn her conviction, another case based on textbook SBS. In Hancock’s case, the key witness, a forensic pathologist named Dr. Michael Stier, has significantly altered his testimony. Where once he testified that the victim’s injuries could only be from abuse, he is now less certain. Sperling confirmed that Stier recently said that bleeding in the brain, once considered a hallmark of SBS, could no longer be used as the sole indicia of abuse.

Yet, prosecutors still try SBS cases and win. Tuerkheimer argues that the criminal justice system has not moved quickly enough to account for the changes in scientific evidence. She pointed out that in many cases, the infant victims were also suffering from other physical conditions, which may have contributed to their injuries. But, because experts and judges considered the triad of SBS conditions definitive, many defendants were unable to contradict the evidence against them. Some may have given wrongful confessions because the investigators led the defendants to believe that the scientific evidence was absolute.

In the case of Keny Medrano-Cambara, who refused to admit to harming 16-month-old Brianna after hours of police interrogation, the judge determined that the scientific evidence was too shaky for conviction. Mendrano-Cambara had already spent 16 months in jail and, after her acquittal, authorities began the process to deport her.

Like Medrano-Cambara, Del Prete, and Hancock, many of the most well-known cases involving SBS are women caring for other people’s children. The Medill Justice Project, based at Northwestern’s School of Journalism, has identified more than 3,000, cases since SBS was first identified in 1971, involving prosecutions based on shaken-baby syndrome. For years, the director Alec Klein told me, journalists have avoided this topic because it relies on complicated and often contradictory medical and scientific evidence. Klein said, “When I asked my students for background, we found none.” This became the impetus behind the database. He wanted to create a statistical resource that could be used to give some context to these legal proceedings.

One surprising finding of the database shows that an overwhelming number—72.5 percent—of SBS accusations are made against men. The statistical evidence goes on to indicate that certain counties are “hot spots” for SBS prosecutions, among them San Diego County, Harris County (which includes Houston, Texas), and Cook County (which includes Chicago, Illinois). As Klein points out, the evidence itself cannot be linked to any dispositive cause. It does, however, provide some background for those hoping to improve educational and outreach efforts.