## Facts

- Audrey A. Edmunds, a child-care provider, was convicted in 1996 of first-degree reckless homicide for the death of a seven-month-old infant who collapsed and later died while in Edmunds’s care.
- At trial, the State presented multiple medical experts who opined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the death resulted from violent shaking (or shaking with impact) causing fatal head injury.
- State experts also testified the injury would have produced an immediate, obvious response and the child would not have appeared normal after injury.
- Lay witnesses testified the infant appeared normal when dropped off at Edmunds’s home shortly before the collapse.
- The defense presented one expert who agreed the infant had been violently shaken but testified the injury occurred before arriving at Edmunds’s home and that the infant could have had a lucid interval before later deterioration.
- In 2006, Edmunds moved for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, asserting that medical understanding of “shaken baby syndrome” and the diagnostic value of the classic triad (subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage, brain swelling) had changed materially since 1996.
- At an evidentiary hearing, Edmunds offered six experts describing an emerging dispute within the medical community about whether the triad alone reliably establishes inflicted shaking, whether lucid intervals can occur, and whether alternative causes could explain the findings.
- The State offered four experts who largely maintained the traditional view that the triad strongly indicated violent shaking with near-immediate collapse.
- The circuit court found Edmunds’s evidence newly discovered and found both sides’ experts credible, but denied a new trial because it considered the State’s experts more convincing.

## Issues

1. Whether the circuit court misapplied the newly-discovered-evidence standard by choosing which side’s postconviction experts were more persuasive rather than assessing the probability of a different jury result.
2. Whether the newly discovered medical evidence created a reasonable probability that a jury, hearing both the trial evidence and the new medical testimony, would reach a different verdict.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the order denying a new trial and remanded with directions to grant a new trial.
- The court held Edmunds satisfied Wisconsin’s newly-discovered-evidence test, including the requirement that the new evidence makes a different result reasonably probable.
- The court concluded the circuit court erred by effectively retrying the case and resolving the expert dispute itself, rather than asking whether a jury could reasonably decide differently in light of the new evidence.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant seeking a new trial based on newly discovered evidence must show: (1) discovery after conviction; (2) no negligence in seeking it; (3) materiality; (4) not merely cumulative; and (5) a reasonable probability of a different result at a new trial.
- The first four elements are reviewed as factual determinations; the “reasonable probability of a different result” element is a legal question reviewed de novo.
- Newly discovered evidence can include a significant posttrial shift in relevant medical knowledge or professional consensus when it bears directly on a central factual theory and was not reasonably available at trial.
- In applying the “reasonable probability” element, a court should not decide which side’s new experts are more persuasive; it must determine whether the combined old and new evidence could reasonably lead a jury to a different outcome.

## Conclusion

Because the prosecution’s case depended heavily on medical testimony that the triad findings and immediate collapse reliably established abusive shaking during Edmunds’s caretaking window, later-developed medical testimony showing a legitimate dispute about mechanism and timing of injury was material and created a reasonable probability of a different verdict, requiring a new trial.


State v. Edmunds, 308 Wis. 2d 374 (Wis. Ct. App. 2008)