December 8, 2021 • 35 mins
Amanda Brumfield, the estranged daughter of actor Billy Bob Thornton, was blamed for the death of her best friend’s daughter. On October 3, 2008, 1 year old Olivia Garcia had been sleeping in her playpen at Amanda’s house, when she woke up at around midnight and attempted to crawl out of her crib. Olivia fell from the rails and landed head first on the floor. She died a few hours later at the hospital. Oftentimes, when a young child dies, authorities assume neglect or abuse was involved, and they accuse the last person taking care of the child. In this case, it was Amanda, and she was arrested, tried, and convicted of aggravated manslaughter. Nine years later, with the help of the Innocence Project of Florida and the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, Amanda is finally free.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Amanda Broomfield considered her friend, Heather Murphy and her children
to be extended family, often caring for Heather's one year
old daughter, Olivia. On the night of October third, two
thousand and eight, Olivia had been sleeping in her playpen
at Amanda's house when she woke up, attempted to climb
out of the playpen, and fell head first on to
the floor. Although she initially seemed fine, within two hours,
(00:24):
she became unresponsive and later died at the hospital of
a skull fracture and brain bleed. The medical examiner opined
that the injuries weren't consistent with a playpen fall. In
cases of the accidental death of a child, authorities often
assume abuse and typically attributed to the last person to
care for the child. In this tragic accident, that person
(00:48):
was Amanda Broomfield, who was charged with multiple counts, including
first degree murder ignoring a head injury in a different
stage of healing. The medical examiner said that the injuries
were of a verity, they could only have come from
abuse or a car accident, and the state said that
Olivia was too young to have been able to climb
out of the playpen. Amanda's expert witnesses were barred from
(01:10):
testifying due to untimely disclosure to the prosecution. Without expert
testimony to refute the state's case, and with the added
pressure of national attention, in part because of Amanda's longest
strange famous father, actor Billy Bob Thornton, Amanda was convicted
of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years. It took the
Innocent Project of Florida, along with the Center for Integrity
(01:32):
and Forensic Sciences, to finally set her free after nine
long years. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrangful Conviction.
(01:54):
Today's episode, Well, this is going to upset you if
you are apparent, if you are an uncle or an aunt,
if you're someone who's ever babysat for someone's child, if
you're someone who loves children, if you're someone who cares
about justice. This story is it's important. Unfortunately, there are
things about it that are typical and then there's some
really extraordinary things about this case as well. And without
(02:18):
further ado, I'm going to introduce our two guests today.
One is going to be familiar to our audience. This
is someone who I will I put her on a pedestal.
Kate Judson is the director of the Center for Integrity
and Forensic Sciences, one of the leading experts in the
world on shaking baby syndrome. And Kate, I really appreciate
(02:40):
you being back here again on the show. Thank you
so much for having me Jason, that's always such a pleasure.
And with her is the woman who lived through this
unspeakable tragedy and saga, Amanda Brumfield. Amanda was wrongfully convicted
and when you hear her story, you're gonna want to
(03:00):
scream and then you're going to do something about it.
So Amanda, thank you for being here and for your courage. Well,
thank you for having me. It's an honor to have
the opportunity. And when I say this story is unique,
I don't think we've ever covered the story of someone
who was wrongly convicted who also happens to be the
daughter of a major movie star. I think that's only
(03:20):
important to mention because if this could happen to Amanda,
it could happen to anyone. Of course, Amanda, you were
born back in the nineteen seventy nine. I don't want
to give away your age, but it's part of your story.
And and your father was Billy Bob Thornton, right, correct.
How was your childhood? My mom and my dad, Billy
(03:44):
had me, and of course to Los seventy nine, mom
and Billy split up and I was about one and
my mom remarried my dad, Jimmy, who then raised me
until I was eighteen years old, even after he and
my mom divorced when I was about nine or ten
in a small small town in Arkansas, graduated with all
(04:04):
of thirty eight people and just kind of went from there.
So would you describe your childhood? I mean, when you
think back on it, was it a happy childhood? Absolutely?
You know, we didn't have a lot, but I didn't
know that we didn't have a lot. I had great,
great grandparents who were involved, and a wonderful dad who
was there for me and and really instilled good values
(04:27):
and morals and work ethic. So I had a great childhood. Okay,
So now let's fast forward to two thousand and eight,
where we get to the heart of the story. Amanda,
tell us about your life at the time this happened
and your relationship with Heather Murphy and her daughter Olivia.
My then husband worked for a restaurant chain and one
(04:48):
of his employees, who was Olivia's mother. She just really
didn't have much of anyone, and I kind of stepped
in to take care of Olivia when she was born.
She was actually my god daughter. We were in small
town in Florida, just outside of Orlando, and I would
take care of Olivia three or four nights a week,
(05:11):
along with my own children, and a lot of times
Olivia's sister Isabella as well. Heather. Now we're very good friends.
Were functioned like an extended family. It sounds as wholesome
as anything could probably be, and it's a scene that
is probably taking place tonight, and households and small towns
and cities all across the country, right just friends and
(05:33):
godparents doing what they can for each other, helping out.
And then, of course, everything went as horribly wrong as
anything could go, although, as is typical in these cases,
at the outset, it wasn't clear what had happened or
what the extent of the problem was. And it started
with a fall, as so many of these shaken baby
cases do. And this is where I like to turn
(05:55):
to you, Kate, and I'm so glad you're here, because
it's so important for people to understand this because these
type of accidents happened children. Fall is just part of
growing up, but sometimes the consequences are dire. Kate set
the stage for us what happened that night and how
did it result in Amanda going to prison? Well, Jason,
(06:17):
Amanda's case really progressed, like so many of these cases
involving shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma. She was
a person who had a loving relationship with this child.
There was no reason to believe she would ever do
anything to hurt her. And while she was babysitting her
(06:38):
god daughter climbed out of a pack and play and
fell onto a hard floor, a carpeted concrete floor. And
what people sometimes say about these cases, and what was
said in Amanda's case, is that that kind of a
fall cannot be fatal or caused very serious injury in
(06:59):
a child out And that's just not true, even though
kids fall all the time, and most of the time
they're not badly injured. In fact, kids have falls that
we would expect to cause all sorts of problems and
they walk away from it fine. Some children don't. Some
children are catastrophically injured from falls that may not initially
seem serious, and that can be for all different kinds
of reasons, including reasons we don't know or understand. So
(07:23):
it's fairly common to have a case like this where
a child has an accident and then the last person
caregiving is accused of abusing them, or the person to
call nine one one is accused of abusing the child.
And please anyone who hasn't already listened to our series
Wrangful Conviction jug Science are coverage of shaking baby syndrome
(07:44):
features our guest today, Kate Judson. She and the host,
my great friend Josh Dubin, do an amazing job of
really laying out in clear and concise terms why this
is just absolutely junk science and we're certainly going to
get into that today. And Kate, can you talk a
little bit about the origins of shaken baby syndrome. Yes, well,
(08:08):
Dr Norman guth Kelch is often credited as being the
first person to hypothesize about shaken baby syndrome, and Dr
gut Kelch, in his later years was definitely very concerned
about the way his hypothesis was being used, and he
was the first pediatric neurosurgeon in Great Britain, and he
had these medical findings that are often associated with trauma,
(08:32):
but the children had apparently suffered no trauma. So what
we're talking about is what's sometimes called the constellation of
findings or the triad of injuries that some physicians believe
allow them to make a diagnosis of shaking, and that
is subdural hematoma which is bleeding between the brain and
the skull under the protective coverings of the brain, retinal
(08:52):
hemorrhage which is bleeding in the back of the eye,
and cerebral edema or en cephalopathy basically brains dwelling and
brain dysfunction. And he saw these things and he thought, wow,
these are normally associated with some kind of a trauma,
right an accident or abuse, but he was confused because
there was not external injury. Children often didn't have fractures
(09:15):
or bruises, so he was wondering if it could be
because at the time where he was from, in Northern England,
it was relatively common for parents to discipline naughty children
by giving them what they often referred to as a
good shake, and he was very concerned about this, and
so he started cautioning in his writings against doing that,
(09:36):
basically saying, we don't really know why these children have this,
but we think one of the reasons could be that
they were shaken, and so parents should be told not
to shake their children, and if a child comes in
with these kinds of medical findings, doctors should ask the
parents if the child might have been shaken. He wasn't
saying that these findings were exclusively diagnostic of shaking, and
(09:57):
he wasn't saying any of the stuff that I'm later
like that the last person with the child must have
shaken the child, or that these findings could only come
from child abuse. He was just wondering about one possible mechanism.
And so in his later years he started to right
and speak, urging a lot more caution, saying, I was
(10:18):
just wondering about this, and that's how science progresses. We
come up with a hypothesis, and we learned about it,
and we test it. And I'm really unhappy with the
way that this has progressed. Yeah, it progressed. The words
just stuck right. It's a catchy phrase, and it seems
like in the hands of people who maybe we're intellectually
(10:39):
incurious this became something that became a fallback when they
didn't know what had really happened. And I believe too
that there's part of us humans that have trouble processing
the death of a child as being something that can
happen naturally. So sometimes subconsciously it's easier to blame someone.
(11:00):
So many of the problems that we see in forensic
sciences come from an idea that's seductive, right, an idea
like we can compare these two things and tell without
error who did the crime, or in these kinds of cases,
we can look at the medical findings of the child
and be sure that what happened was a homicide. And
(11:21):
then if you want to save kids, it becomes so
easy just keep them away from bad people who will
hurt them. And that's a much less complicated answer to
a world in which kids can be hurt by disease
or congenital illness, or falling down the stairs or falling
out of their playpens. Okay, So, Amanda, if you could
(11:44):
take us through this time period, this ten o'clock till
the ambulance arrived, and what started off as a very
normal average night with the child that seemed to be
behaving normally after this fall, if you could just take
us through the sequence of events, because I think people
and really learn something from this. That night, Heather and
I had taken all of the kids, meaning my children
(12:06):
as well as her too, and we gone to Chick
fil A. The kids played eight I stopped for ice
cream for all the kids. Once we got back to
my house, all the kids played, we could, did baths
and all that good stuff, and the inn bedtime. Heather
and I sat in the living room just chit chatting
like normal, and Olivia was still up. Around ten ten thirty,
(12:28):
Heather had set the pack and play up and I
laid Olivia down so she could go to sleep. Shortly
after that, probably round eleven, Heather went home because she
had to work the next day. After she left, I
was just watching TV. I had to get up to
use the bathroom, and whenever I came back around the corner,
Olivia was on the side of the playpen, which she
had tried several times before to climb out the playpen,
(12:50):
but just hadn't actually climbed out yet. When I saw her,
I just said her name quickly. I just said Olivia.
And when I did is when she went off of
the side of the apen. When I came around the playpen,
there was nothing to indicate that she had hit her head.
She had looked to me like she had hit her butt,
and that's where she had a small cut on her tongue.
(13:11):
And Dad did it with a paper tawel to make
sure it was okay and checked her. She was fine,
and then I let her down so she could play
for a little while, and she played with some balls
that we had in a little container there, and after
some time she laid down the love seat beside me
and went to sleep. After she had been a sleep
(13:34):
for a little while, my then husband was on his
way home and would call just to let me know
that he was on his way, and I went to
move Olivia into the playpen so that she could sleep,
and uh, something just didn't feel right. She just didn't
feel right. After I got off the phone with him,
once he came in the door, I knew something was wrong.
(13:54):
Her breathing steamed shallow, so I had started CPR. He
called one, and shortly after the first responder got there
and began CPR himself, and the next thing I knew
was being at the hospital and them saying that she
was pronounced stead at the hospital. This episode is underwritten
(14:22):
by a i G, a leading global insurance company, and
by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities
in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal
justice system is a key pillar of the A i
G pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and
other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in
(14:43):
need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice.
Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to
people and communities worldwide. So doctors examined Olivia and determined
(15:08):
that she died of a skull fracture and her brain bleed. However,
a medical examiner also opined incorrectly that the injuries were
not consistent with a playpen fall. Right, so we know
that in cases of accidental death of a child, the
authorities default is to say that there was abuse, and
(15:29):
as Kate pointed out, they typically attributed to the last
person who was around the child. That part would be
logical if there was actual abuse, but of course in
this case it was an accident, and you were the
last person known to be with the baby. The case
on top of all the other problems due national tension
(15:49):
because of the fact that you had a father who
was by now a famous actor, right, And we know
that has a big impact as well. When the media
gets involved, it wraps up the messure and it also
creates an environment in which it's less likely that you'll
get a fair trial because it's hard to be an
impartial juror when you've been reading that this woman as
a monster who killed this baby, right, especially a small
(16:11):
town with a famous father. But the fact is you
weren't arrested for quite some time, right, right, It was
approximately six months later. Olivia passed in October two and
it was May of two nine, and by now, of
course it may have two thousand nine who were charged
with first degree murder, among other things. So now let's
(16:34):
go to trial. Orange Ossio. A chief medical examner, jan Garavalia,
determined that Olivia's death was a homicide based on the autopsy.
She found a three and a half inch fraction on
Olivia's skull, obleedient swelling in her brain, hemorrhaging behind her eyes,
and cuts on her tongue. Now, at trial, Garvelia and
another expert testified that the skull fracture was quote inconsistent
(16:59):
with an accident ental fall, and could only be caused
by a car accident or being slammed against a wall,
proving that Olivia was abused end quote. The state also claimed,
and this is bananas, that Olivia was too young to
climb out of her playpen, as if there's an exact
age when kids can climb out of her playpen, right,
Kate tell us some of the other things that went
(17:21):
wrong here at this critical critical stage, Well, there were
a couple of things about Amanda's case and about Olivia's
death that really complicate the picture. One of the things
that we were very concerned about when we looked at
her case on post conviction was that the medical examiner
did not preserve, as far as we could ever discover
a piece of the bone the fracture itself, So there
(17:42):
was no way to look at the fracture itself to
tell how old it was. And that's important because Amanda
had been nowhere near Olivia for the weeks leading up
to her death. She was visiting her dad, she was
out of the state, So it was really important to
know how old this fracture was. And the reasons that
we had to believe that it was older was that
(18:06):
upon careful inspection of the tissues that were preserved from
autopsy that were above and below the fracture, those appeared
to have blood protinaceous material in them that was older.
So it indicated that there could have been some older
(18:26):
injury there, and that made it very likely that the
fracture was an older fracture. And that's important because a
child can, and you know, it doesn't happen very often,
but a child can be critically injured or die from
a fall like that, from a fall out of a
playpin onto a hard floor, but a delicate child, a
child with an injury, is more likely to be seriously
(18:49):
injured in that kind of a fall. It makes more
sense that someone who's already hurt would re injure their
existing injury, So that was really problematic. It was also
really problematic the way that they tried to place the
blame upon Amanda. So the story that the state told
(19:09):
at trial to accused her was really internally inconsistent. The
timeline was very fuzzy. They said all sorts of things
that weren't borne out by the physical evidence. I'll give
you one example. After Olivia had her fall, Amanda sat
up with her for a little while, and, you know,
(19:30):
as you might do with a child who's upset, let
her play, gave her a snack. She had banana and
some fruit snacks, and those were found in her stomach
at autopsy. So there's pretty clear physical evidence corroborating what
Amanda said. And yet at the trial, doctors testified that
(19:51):
Amanda couldn't have been telling the truth because Olivia had
a cut on her tongue that would have prevented her
from eat. But that doesn't make any sense. We had
in controvertible physical evidence that she indeed eight, but instead
the subjective speculation of the medical examiner seemed to sort
(20:16):
of trump that objective evidence and that testimony. It's going
to hit hard with a jury because why would they
doubt what this guy that's very learned and educated person
is saying. Right, one would need to see evidence to
the contrary in order to have any degree of healthy skepticism,
even though we know that the standard is supposed to
(20:38):
be beyond a reasonable doubt. But that's not the way
it works in courtrooms unfortunately, especially in cases like this,
is really guilty until proven innocent, and that takes us
to the defense. Was there any defense expert presented anything
to counter this false narrative that the medical examiner was
putting out there? There were two defense experts that were
(21:00):
in it at the time. My experts had information to
the effect, for example, the videos showing other children of
similar age climbing out of play pens and cribs and such,
of the old injury and what happens with when that
iron starts to build up, and how that indicates that
it's an old injury and had to have at least
been I be least seventy two hours of healing that
(21:21):
had already started. There was a lot of evidence that
was critical to my case that my experts were not
allowed to discuss because it had not been disclosed to
the prosecution prior to the trial date. Their entire testimony
wasn't even allowed. Oh so that's a big mistake on
your defense team side. They had the evidence but couldn't
(21:43):
present it because they had either forgotten or just botched
it right. Well, my attorney has changed so many times
through the public defender's office. My initial attorney had moved
to another state, and then someone else came on, and
then the very last attorney was added about ten days
prior to trial, maybe forteen days before trial. Wow, how
long was the trial? Four days? Four days for a
(22:05):
first degree murder case? And there was even a comment
made on the first day of trial that they were
sure they could get it wrapped up by the weekend
because it was Memorial Day weekend and the prosecutor had
plans for Memorial Day weekend, right, And I'm sure the
inference there was a new jury members probably want to
get home too, You probably have some great stuff going on. Yeah,
(22:26):
that doesn't sit very well. So okay, four day trial,
everyone's trying to get home for Memorial Day. You're facing
a charge of continue to prison for the rest of
your life for claim that you know and everybody should
have known you didn't commit, and the jury goes out.
What were you thinking at this time? I still had
this belief in this system that my entire life I
(22:48):
had believed worked. I went in there knowing that I
was going home because innocent people don't go to person.
And when they said not guilty on the first two counts.
I was like, finally, and then they say guilty on
the third count, which was manslaughter. My entire world crumbled
right then because what I knew is a working system failed,
(23:10):
not just me, but my children. Right then, I mean,
all I'm thinking is who's gonna raise my daughters? What's
going to happen? Now you just fall to the deepest
pit of despair. There's no one who can hear you
at that point. It's just a lonely dark place. They
(23:41):
took me too Low Correctional which is in Ocala, Florida.
It's a maximum security women's facility. And of course other
than this, I've never been in trouble, arrested anything. So
I'm going into one of the worst women's prisons in
Florida and was there maybe two weeks and was placed
into protective because to be because someone tried to extort
(24:01):
money from my family because it was a high profile case.
And then they sent me all the way to Homestead,
which is basically the end of Florida because of liability reasons.
They didn't want me close to where family and the
situations could all be close to the facility. So now
you're far away from your family. Did you have opportunities
(24:22):
to get visits while you were there? I did. In
the beginning. My daughters went to stay with my mom
because that was just the safest place for them to
be at the time, and for about the first year
she was good to bring them, and after that she
just kind of used that situation to push me out
and take them under her own wing. So then I
was isolated for my children too. So for those first
(24:42):
couple of years, it was nothing but crying in sadness
and just loneliness. And on my second year, I just
decided that I wasn't going to allow an injustice to
completely strip me of who I was, and so I
just turned it all around. I started taking college classes,
I started into culinary arts, some exercising and doing things
that would better myself in my mind and keep me sharp.
(25:06):
So good that you did, too, because you had a
lot of work to do, and I think it's safe
to say you wouldn't be here today if not for
the fact that you did find that extra gear. Right,
So you originally denied a new trial. Right direct appeals
concluded in late two thousand thirteen, and the court didn't
even have anything else to say. No additional comments. But
then in two thousand and fifteen, the Innisis Project of Florida,
(25:30):
and of course the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences
Welson on the c i f S took on representation
for you. Did you at this point started to see
the light at the end of the tunnel? I did,
And it couldn't have been at a better time, because
I had hit a point that I was just done.
It was so hopeless, and I was right on the
(25:51):
verge of giving up, and then the Inniscence Project showed
up and it was like everything started to turn around
right at that moment. Right, So, hey, how did you
get involved? As many villains as they're on this case
or a number of heroes as well, and you're one
of them. So tell us what happened back then take
us through it. So Amanda's case came to me when
I was still working at the University of Wisconsin Law School,
(26:15):
and she had a team of people who believed in
her innocence, who wanted to see her get exonerated. And
one of those was actually Dr John Plunkett, one of
the experts who testified at her trial. He was so
troubled by this case. He was very upset about the
way that things had gone, and so I started to
(26:35):
hear about her case from a number of different folks
um and as I dug more into it, it was
so clear that it was so similar to the other
cases that I had done with innocent clients who'd been
wrongfully convicted with very similar facts, And so I knew
that we would need a team that included local council
(26:55):
in Florida and the best person I can think of
there with Steth Miller at the Innocence Project of Florida.
So I called him up and we agreed to work
on this case together. She had appending deadline, so we
actually had to pull it together fairly quickly. Amanda had
some family members who were very devoted to her innocence
who actually drove from Indiana to my office where I
(27:20):
was working in Wisconsin with boxes and boxes of discovery
and files and spent probably two days in my office
scanning everything in And so we started working on basically
this big brief, and we filed at the beginning of
two thousand fifteen, and some of the things in the
emotion scientific and medical expert witness opinions were cited that
(27:42):
proved that short distance falls like the one that little
Olivia took from the playpen, can cause serious injury and death,
and had led the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to
warn about the potentially lethal danger of short distance falls
from playpens, shopping carts, child seats, and high chairs. They
also presented evidence demonstrating that the States claimed that Olivia
(28:04):
was too young to climb out of her playpen was
patently false. They presented a two thousand eleven study examining
the injuries associated with cribs, playpens, and bassonets of a
hundred and eighty one thousand, six fifty four children younger
than two years old. So this is like boom right. Yeah.
What that study showed is that children fall out of
(28:27):
playpens and cribs relatively frequently, and they relatively frequently do
it on their own. So fast forward now to two
thousand and twenty, when Amanda was granted an evidential hearing,
they could have led to a new trial, right, but
within days of the hearing that was planned for early September,
the state prosecutors came along and offered you a deal, Amanda. Right.
(28:48):
They said that if you stopped pressing your innocence in
court that you could go home immediately rather than roll
the dice, I guess, because even if the conviction was
overturned at the new trial, you could still faced an
additional twenty years if you've been convicted again. Of course,
who knows what they could have convicted you up. So
how did you feel at this point? I mean, here
you were. Now you've got the fantastic representation, people who
(29:11):
not only really believe with you, but are eminently qualified
and had actually done exactly what they set out to do,
which is proven that you were as innocent as you
always said that you were. And now here comes this
Sophie's choice. Really, right, after a certain amount of time
that I had been incarcerated, I actually became a law
clerk and started helping others on their cases. And after
(29:31):
time and time again of seeing just how badly the
system would railroad people, I just lost all faith in
justice period. So I just came to a point where
it's like, what do I do here? And at that
point my family needed me more than I needed to
keep the fight going and risk still not being able
(29:53):
to be there for them because it was no longer
about right or wrong. It was all about making sure
that I was doing what was right for family, even
if it meant that I had to just accept the
deal and go home. It's not hard for me to
understand why you did what you did, even as hard
as it must have been. So now you're free, And
(30:13):
how has it been now that you've been free and
home for a year. I have been incredibly blessed because
I have an amazing husband, I have an amazing support system,
so I didn't require a lot of external resources to
get back on my feet. If it wasn't for that,
I don't know how well I could have fared well. Amanda.
(30:34):
All I can say is you are a hero to
me and so many other people hearing your story. Now
we have what I always say is my favorite part
of the show. This is the part of the show
that I think our listeners have come to expect them
look forward to as well, which is called closing arguments.
And closing arguments works like this. I thank you both again,
(30:56):
Kate Judson and Amanda Brumfield for being here and taking
your time out to share this very very important story.
And then I'm going to kick back in my chair,
turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on and
just listen. Kate. I'll due respect to you, but we're
gonna say the best for last, and that's Amanda. She's
the star, and we're going to let you share whatever
(31:17):
else you want to share with our audience and with me,
and then you can just pass the mic off to Amanda,
and that's how we'll close out the show. Well, one
of the things that I haven't gotten a chance to
do yet is saying Amanda's praises. Amanda's story getting out
there is I'm sure going to help others, But Amanda
has already helped others. When she was inside the walls
(31:39):
and she was helping in the law library as a
law clerk, I know that she was helping other women
with their cases, and in fact, she was a big
part of why another one of our clients came to
us and was also freed right around the same time.
And so I know that Amanda has directly helped lots
more people than I know about. But I can point
(32:00):
to at least one person who's free today in part
because of her advocacy. And I'm just so impressed by
what she's been able to do since she's been out.
I know not from personal experience, but from talking to
other folks who have been released, how very, very hard
it is. But she's handling it with such strength and grace,
and I am so impressed. And what I would also
(32:23):
like people to know is that there are still accusations
being made under this same paradigm, under the same hypothesis,
and they're happening all the time. And while it's true
that children are abused, and that children can be seriously
injured or killed because of abuse, it's also true that
(32:43):
abuse can be misdiagnosed with absolutely tragic consequences. No tragic
because an innocent person can go to prison like happened
to Amanda. An innocent person can end up on death row,
as has happened to um some of the other folks
on Who's Behalf we advocate, And even if someone doesn't
(33:04):
go to prison, it can tear families apart as it
works its way through both the criminal justice system and
the child custody system. The other thing is that if
a child is ill and their misdiagnosed as haven't been abused,
they don't get the treatment for their illness that they
should get, or it's delayed, and so it's critically important
that we re examine the way we look at these
(33:25):
cases and the incredible power that we allow a small
collection of doctors to have over people's lives. Amanda, First,
I just want to say I'm incredibly humbled and grateful
to even have the opportunity to get this word out
and to be a part of something as big as
an innocence movement like this. My biggest hope is that
(33:48):
people will start to pay attention and not just allow
media to determine how they see someone. That's how a
lot of wrongful convictions happened. We don't use our own intuition,
in our own minds to see what is real and
what it's not. Instead, we're just quick to convict in
our own minds and our own hearts, not knowing the
(34:10):
circumstances or the facts, and just believing in theatrics and
oh well, it must be right because it was on
the news. We have to stand on our own feet
and we have to listen. If it was not for
the Innocence Project, if it wasn't for Kate, if it
wasn't for Seth Melissa. In the beginning, Christa, everyone every
step of the way worked so hard to get me home,
(34:30):
and as much as it pained me to have to
accept a plea, at the same time, we still one
because now I can be out here and help someone
else to not end up in this same situation, and
I can be a voice for somebody who may not
have one. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction. I'd
(34:54):
like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden,
Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wards, with research by Lila Robinson.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast,
and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
(35:15):
Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also
follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason
flop ralevul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good
Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
Amanda Broomfield considered her friend, Heather Murphy and her children
to be extended family, often caring for Heather's one year
old daughter, Olivia. On the night of October third, two
thousand and eight, Olivia had been sleeping in her playpen
at Amanda's house when she woke up, attempted to climb
out of the playpen, and fell head first on to
the floor. Although she initially seemed fine, within two hours,
(00:24):
she became unresponsive and later died at the hospital of
a skull fracture and brain bleed. The medical examiner opined
that the injuries weren't consistent with a playpen fall. In
cases of the accidental death of a child, authorities often
assume abuse and typically attributed to the last person to
care for the child. In this tragic accident, that person
(00:48):
was Amanda Broomfield, who was charged with multiple counts, including
first degree murder ignoring a head injury in a different
stage of healing. The medical examiner said that the injuries
were of a verity, they could only have come from
abuse or a car accident, and the state said that
Olivia was too young to have been able to climb
out of the playpen. Amanda's expert witnesses were barred from
(01:10):
testifying due to untimely disclosure to the prosecution. Without expert
testimony to refute the state's case, and with the added
pressure of national attention, in part because of Amanda's longest
strange famous father, actor Billy Bob Thornton, Amanda was convicted
of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years. It took the
Innocent Project of Florida, along with the Center for Integrity
(01:32):
and Forensic Sciences, to finally set her free after nine
long years. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrangful Conviction.
(01:54):
Today's episode, Well, this is going to upset you if
you are apparent, if you are an uncle or an aunt,
if you're someone who's ever babysat for someone's child, if
you're someone who loves children, if you're someone who cares
about justice. This story is it's important. Unfortunately, there are
things about it that are typical and then there's some
really extraordinary things about this case as well. And without
(02:18):
further ado, I'm going to introduce our two guests today.
One is going to be familiar to our audience. This
is someone who I will I put her on a pedestal.
Kate Judson is the director of the Center for Integrity
and Forensic Sciences, one of the leading experts in the
world on shaking baby syndrome. And Kate, I really appreciate
(02:40):
you being back here again on the show. Thank you
so much for having me Jason, that's always such a pleasure.
And with her is the woman who lived through this
unspeakable tragedy and saga, Amanda Brumfield. Amanda was wrongfully convicted
and when you hear her story, you're gonna want to
(03:00):
scream and then you're going to do something about it.
So Amanda, thank you for being here and for your courage. Well,
thank you for having me. It's an honor to have
the opportunity. And when I say this story is unique,
I don't think we've ever covered the story of someone
who was wrongly convicted who also happens to be the
daughter of a major movie star. I think that's only
(03:20):
important to mention because if this could happen to Amanda,
it could happen to anyone. Of course, Amanda, you were
born back in the nineteen seventy nine. I don't want
to give away your age, but it's part of your story.
And and your father was Billy Bob Thornton, right, correct.
How was your childhood? My mom and my dad, Billy
(03:44):
had me, and of course to Los seventy nine, mom
and Billy split up and I was about one and
my mom remarried my dad, Jimmy, who then raised me
until I was eighteen years old, even after he and
my mom divorced when I was about nine or ten
in a small small town in Arkansas, graduated with all
(04:04):
of thirty eight people and just kind of went from there.
So would you describe your childhood? I mean, when you
think back on it, was it a happy childhood? Absolutely?
You know, we didn't have a lot, but I didn't
know that we didn't have a lot. I had great,
great grandparents who were involved, and a wonderful dad who
was there for me and and really instilled good values
(04:27):
and morals and work ethic. So I had a great childhood. Okay,
So now let's fast forward to two thousand and eight,
where we get to the heart of the story. Amanda,
tell us about your life at the time this happened
and your relationship with Heather Murphy and her daughter Olivia.
My then husband worked for a restaurant chain and one
(04:48):
of his employees, who was Olivia's mother. She just really
didn't have much of anyone, and I kind of stepped
in to take care of Olivia when she was born.
She was actually my god daughter. We were in small
town in Florida, just outside of Orlando, and I would
take care of Olivia three or four nights a week,
(05:11):
along with my own children, and a lot of times
Olivia's sister Isabella as well. Heather. Now we're very good friends.
Were functioned like an extended family. It sounds as wholesome
as anything could probably be, and it's a scene that
is probably taking place tonight, and households and small towns
and cities all across the country, right just friends and
(05:33):
godparents doing what they can for each other, helping out.
And then, of course, everything went as horribly wrong as
anything could go, although, as is typical in these cases,
at the outset, it wasn't clear what had happened or
what the extent of the problem was. And it started
with a fall, as so many of these shaken baby
cases do. And this is where I like to turn
(05:55):
to you, Kate, and I'm so glad you're here, because
it's so important for people to understand this because these
type of accidents happened children. Fall is just part of
growing up, but sometimes the consequences are dire. Kate set
the stage for us what happened that night and how
did it result in Amanda going to prison? Well, Jason,
(06:17):
Amanda's case really progressed, like so many of these cases
involving shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma. She was
a person who had a loving relationship with this child.
There was no reason to believe she would ever do
anything to hurt her. And while she was babysitting her
(06:38):
god daughter climbed out of a pack and play and
fell onto a hard floor, a carpeted concrete floor. And
what people sometimes say about these cases, and what was
said in Amanda's case, is that that kind of a
fall cannot be fatal or caused very serious injury in
(06:59):
a child out And that's just not true, even though
kids fall all the time, and most of the time
they're not badly injured. In fact, kids have falls that
we would expect to cause all sorts of problems and
they walk away from it fine. Some children don't. Some
children are catastrophically injured from falls that may not initially
seem serious, and that can be for all different kinds
of reasons, including reasons we don't know or understand. So
(07:23):
it's fairly common to have a case like this where
a child has an accident and then the last person
caregiving is accused of abusing them, or the person to
call nine one one is accused of abusing the child.
And please anyone who hasn't already listened to our series
Wrangful Conviction jug Science are coverage of shaking baby syndrome
(07:44):
features our guest today, Kate Judson. She and the host,
my great friend Josh Dubin, do an amazing job of
really laying out in clear and concise terms why this
is just absolutely junk science and we're certainly going to
get into that today. And Kate, can you talk a
little bit about the origins of shaken baby syndrome. Yes, well,
(08:08):
Dr Norman guth Kelch is often credited as being the
first person to hypothesize about shaken baby syndrome, and Dr
gut Kelch, in his later years was definitely very concerned
about the way his hypothesis was being used, and he
was the first pediatric neurosurgeon in Great Britain, and he
had these medical findings that are often associated with trauma,
(08:32):
but the children had apparently suffered no trauma. So what
we're talking about is what's sometimes called the constellation of
findings or the triad of injuries that some physicians believe
allow them to make a diagnosis of shaking, and that
is subdural hematoma which is bleeding between the brain and
the skull under the protective coverings of the brain, retinal
(08:52):
hemorrhage which is bleeding in the back of the eye,
and cerebral edema or en cephalopathy basically brains dwelling and
brain dysfunction. And he saw these things and he thought, wow,
these are normally associated with some kind of a trauma,
right an accident or abuse, but he was confused because
there was not external injury. Children often didn't have fractures
(09:15):
or bruises, so he was wondering if it could be
because at the time where he was from, in Northern England,
it was relatively common for parents to discipline naughty children
by giving them what they often referred to as a
good shake, and he was very concerned about this, and
so he started cautioning in his writings against doing that,
(09:36):
basically saying, we don't really know why these children have this,
but we think one of the reasons could be that
they were shaken, and so parents should be told not
to shake their children, and if a child comes in
with these kinds of medical findings, doctors should ask the
parents if the child might have been shaken. He wasn't
saying that these findings were exclusively diagnostic of shaking, and
(09:57):
he wasn't saying any of the stuff that I'm later
like that the last person with the child must have
shaken the child, or that these findings could only come
from child abuse. He was just wondering about one possible mechanism.
And so in his later years he started to right
and speak, urging a lot more caution, saying, I was
(10:18):
just wondering about this, and that's how science progresses. We
come up with a hypothesis, and we learned about it,
and we test it. And I'm really unhappy with the
way that this has progressed. Yeah, it progressed. The words
just stuck right. It's a catchy phrase, and it seems
like in the hands of people who maybe we're intellectually
(10:39):
incurious this became something that became a fallback when they
didn't know what had really happened. And I believe too
that there's part of us humans that have trouble processing
the death of a child as being something that can
happen naturally. So sometimes subconsciously it's easier to blame someone.
(11:00):
So many of the problems that we see in forensic
sciences come from an idea that's seductive, right, an idea
like we can compare these two things and tell without
error who did the crime, or in these kinds of cases,
we can look at the medical findings of the child
and be sure that what happened was a homicide. And
(11:21):
then if you want to save kids, it becomes so
easy just keep them away from bad people who will
hurt them. And that's a much less complicated answer to
a world in which kids can be hurt by disease
or congenital illness, or falling down the stairs or falling
out of their playpens. Okay, So, Amanda, if you could
(11:44):
take us through this time period, this ten o'clock till
the ambulance arrived, and what started off as a very
normal average night with the child that seemed to be
behaving normally after this fall, if you could just take
us through the sequence of events, because I think people
and really learn something from this. That night, Heather and
I had taken all of the kids, meaning my children
(12:06):
as well as her too, and we gone to Chick
fil A. The kids played eight I stopped for ice
cream for all the kids. Once we got back to
my house, all the kids played, we could, did baths
and all that good stuff, and the inn bedtime. Heather
and I sat in the living room just chit chatting
like normal, and Olivia was still up. Around ten ten thirty,
(12:28):
Heather had set the pack and play up and I
laid Olivia down so she could go to sleep. Shortly
after that, probably round eleven, Heather went home because she
had to work the next day. After she left, I
was just watching TV. I had to get up to
use the bathroom, and whenever I came back around the corner,
Olivia was on the side of the playpen, which she
had tried several times before to climb out the playpen,
(12:50):
but just hadn't actually climbed out yet. When I saw her,
I just said her name quickly. I just said Olivia.
And when I did is when she went off of
the side of the apen. When I came around the playpen,
there was nothing to indicate that she had hit her head.
She had looked to me like she had hit her butt,
and that's where she had a small cut on her tongue.
(13:11):
And Dad did it with a paper tawel to make
sure it was okay and checked her. She was fine,
and then I let her down so she could play
for a little while, and she played with some balls
that we had in a little container there, and after
some time she laid down the love seat beside me
and went to sleep. After she had been a sleep
(13:34):
for a little while, my then husband was on his
way home and would call just to let me know
that he was on his way, and I went to
move Olivia into the playpen so that she could sleep,
and uh, something just didn't feel right. She just didn't
feel right. After I got off the phone with him,
once he came in the door, I knew something was wrong.
(13:54):
Her breathing steamed shallow, so I had started CPR. He
called one, and shortly after the first responder got there
and began CPR himself, and the next thing I knew
was being at the hospital and them saying that she
was pronounced stead at the hospital. This episode is underwritten
(14:22):
by a i G, a leading global insurance company, and
by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities
in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal
justice system is a key pillar of the A i
G pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and
other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in
(14:43):
need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice.
Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to
people and communities worldwide. So doctors examined Olivia and determined
(15:08):
that she died of a skull fracture and her brain bleed. However,
a medical examiner also opined incorrectly that the injuries were
not consistent with a playpen fall. Right, so we know
that in cases of accidental death of a child, the
authorities default is to say that there was abuse, and
(15:29):
as Kate pointed out, they typically attributed to the last
person who was around the child. That part would be
logical if there was actual abuse, but of course in
this case it was an accident, and you were the
last person known to be with the baby. The case
on top of all the other problems due national tension
(15:49):
because of the fact that you had a father who
was by now a famous actor, right, And we know
that has a big impact as well. When the media
gets involved, it wraps up the messure and it also
creates an environment in which it's less likely that you'll
get a fair trial because it's hard to be an
impartial juror when you've been reading that this woman as
a monster who killed this baby, right, especially a small
(16:11):
town with a famous father. But the fact is you
weren't arrested for quite some time, right, right, It was
approximately six months later. Olivia passed in October two and
it was May of two nine, and by now, of
course it may have two thousand nine who were charged
with first degree murder, among other things. So now let's
(16:34):
go to trial. Orange Ossio. A chief medical examner, jan Garavalia,
determined that Olivia's death was a homicide based on the autopsy.
She found a three and a half inch fraction on
Olivia's skull, obleedient swelling in her brain, hemorrhaging behind her eyes,
and cuts on her tongue. Now, at trial, Garvelia and
another expert testified that the skull fracture was quote inconsistent
(16:59):
with an accident ental fall, and could only be caused
by a car accident or being slammed against a wall,
proving that Olivia was abused end quote. The state also claimed,
and this is bananas, that Olivia was too young to
climb out of her playpen, as if there's an exact
age when kids can climb out of her playpen, right,
Kate tell us some of the other things that went
(17:21):
wrong here at this critical critical stage, Well, there were
a couple of things about Amanda's case and about Olivia's
death that really complicate the picture. One of the things
that we were very concerned about when we looked at
her case on post conviction was that the medical examiner
did not preserve, as far as we could ever discover
a piece of the bone the fracture itself, So there
(17:42):
was no way to look at the fracture itself to
tell how old it was. And that's important because Amanda
had been nowhere near Olivia for the weeks leading up
to her death. She was visiting her dad, she was
out of the state, So it was really important to
know how old this fracture was. And the reasons that
we had to believe that it was older was that
(18:06):
upon careful inspection of the tissues that were preserved from
autopsy that were above and below the fracture, those appeared
to have blood protinaceous material in them that was older.
So it indicated that there could have been some older
(18:26):
injury there, and that made it very likely that the
fracture was an older fracture. And that's important because a
child can, and you know, it doesn't happen very often,
but a child can be critically injured or die from
a fall like that, from a fall out of a
playpin onto a hard floor, but a delicate child, a
child with an injury, is more likely to be seriously
(18:49):
injured in that kind of a fall. It makes more
sense that someone who's already hurt would re injure their
existing injury, So that was really problematic. It was also
really problematic the way that they tried to place the
blame upon Amanda. So the story that the state told
(19:09):
at trial to accused her was really internally inconsistent. The
timeline was very fuzzy. They said all sorts of things
that weren't borne out by the physical evidence. I'll give
you one example. After Olivia had her fall, Amanda sat
up with her for a little while, and, you know,
(19:30):
as you might do with a child who's upset, let
her play, gave her a snack. She had banana and
some fruit snacks, and those were found in her stomach
at autopsy. So there's pretty clear physical evidence corroborating what
Amanda said. And yet at the trial, doctors testified that
(19:51):
Amanda couldn't have been telling the truth because Olivia had
a cut on her tongue that would have prevented her
from eat. But that doesn't make any sense. We had
in controvertible physical evidence that she indeed eight, but instead
the subjective speculation of the medical examiner seemed to sort
(20:16):
of trump that objective evidence and that testimony. It's going
to hit hard with a jury because why would they
doubt what this guy that's very learned and educated person
is saying. Right, one would need to see evidence to
the contrary in order to have any degree of healthy skepticism,
even though we know that the standard is supposed to
(20:38):
be beyond a reasonable doubt. But that's not the way
it works in courtrooms unfortunately, especially in cases like this,
is really guilty until proven innocent, and that takes us
to the defense. Was there any defense expert presented anything
to counter this false narrative that the medical examiner was
putting out there? There were two defense experts that were
(21:00):
in it at the time. My experts had information to
the effect, for example, the videos showing other children of
similar age climbing out of play pens and cribs and such,
of the old injury and what happens with when that
iron starts to build up, and how that indicates that
it's an old injury and had to have at least
been I be least seventy two hours of healing that
(21:21):
had already started. There was a lot of evidence that
was critical to my case that my experts were not
allowed to discuss because it had not been disclosed to
the prosecution prior to the trial date. Their entire testimony
wasn't even allowed. Oh so that's a big mistake on
your defense team side. They had the evidence but couldn't
(21:43):
present it because they had either forgotten or just botched
it right. Well, my attorney has changed so many times
through the public defender's office. My initial attorney had moved
to another state, and then someone else came on, and
then the very last attorney was added about ten days
prior to trial, maybe forteen days before trial. Wow, how
long was the trial? Four days? Four days for a
(22:05):
first degree murder case? And there was even a comment
made on the first day of trial that they were
sure they could get it wrapped up by the weekend
because it was Memorial Day weekend and the prosecutor had
plans for Memorial Day weekend, right, And I'm sure the
inference there was a new jury members probably want to
get home too, You probably have some great stuff going on. Yeah,
(22:26):
that doesn't sit very well. So okay, four day trial,
everyone's trying to get home for Memorial Day. You're facing
a charge of continue to prison for the rest of
your life for claim that you know and everybody should
have known you didn't commit, and the jury goes out.
What were you thinking at this time? I still had
this belief in this system that my entire life I
(22:48):
had believed worked. I went in there knowing that I
was going home because innocent people don't go to person.
And when they said not guilty on the first two counts.
I was like, finally, and then they say guilty on
the third count, which was manslaughter. My entire world crumbled
right then because what I knew is a working system failed,
(23:10):
not just me, but my children. Right then, I mean,
all I'm thinking is who's gonna raise my daughters? What's
going to happen? Now you just fall to the deepest
pit of despair. There's no one who can hear you
at that point. It's just a lonely dark place. They
(23:41):
took me too Low Correctional which is in Ocala, Florida.
It's a maximum security women's facility. And of course other
than this, I've never been in trouble, arrested anything. So
I'm going into one of the worst women's prisons in
Florida and was there maybe two weeks and was placed
into protective because to be because someone tried to extort
(24:01):
money from my family because it was a high profile case.
And then they sent me all the way to Homestead,
which is basically the end of Florida because of liability reasons.
They didn't want me close to where family and the
situations could all be close to the facility. So now
you're far away from your family. Did you have opportunities
(24:22):
to get visits while you were there? I did. In
the beginning. My daughters went to stay with my mom
because that was just the safest place for them to
be at the time, and for about the first year
she was good to bring them, and after that she
just kind of used that situation to push me out
and take them under her own wing. So then I
was isolated for my children too. So for those first
(24:42):
couple of years, it was nothing but crying in sadness
and just loneliness. And on my second year, I just
decided that I wasn't going to allow an injustice to
completely strip me of who I was, and so I
just turned it all around. I started taking college classes,
I started into culinary arts, some exercising and doing things
that would better myself in my mind and keep me sharp.
(25:06):
So good that you did, too, because you had a
lot of work to do, and I think it's safe
to say you wouldn't be here today if not for
the fact that you did find that extra gear. Right,
So you originally denied a new trial. Right direct appeals
concluded in late two thousand thirteen, and the court didn't
even have anything else to say. No additional comments. But
then in two thousand and fifteen, the Innisis Project of Florida,
(25:30):
and of course the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences
Welson on the c i f S took on representation
for you. Did you at this point started to see
the light at the end of the tunnel? I did,
And it couldn't have been at a better time, because
I had hit a point that I was just done.
It was so hopeless, and I was right on the
(25:51):
verge of giving up, and then the Inniscence Project showed
up and it was like everything started to turn around
right at that moment. Right, So, hey, how did you
get involved? As many villains as they're on this case
or a number of heroes as well, and you're one
of them. So tell us what happened back then take
us through it. So Amanda's case came to me when
I was still working at the University of Wisconsin Law School,
(26:15):
and she had a team of people who believed in
her innocence, who wanted to see her get exonerated. And
one of those was actually Dr John Plunkett, one of
the experts who testified at her trial. He was so
troubled by this case. He was very upset about the
way that things had gone, and so I started to
(26:35):
hear about her case from a number of different folks
um and as I dug more into it, it was
so clear that it was so similar to the other
cases that I had done with innocent clients who'd been
wrongfully convicted with very similar facts, And so I knew
that we would need a team that included local council
(26:55):
in Florida and the best person I can think of
there with Steth Miller at the Innocence Project of Florida.
So I called him up and we agreed to work
on this case together. She had appending deadline, so we
actually had to pull it together fairly quickly. Amanda had
some family members who were very devoted to her innocence
who actually drove from Indiana to my office where I
(27:20):
was working in Wisconsin with boxes and boxes of discovery
and files and spent probably two days in my office
scanning everything in And so we started working on basically
this big brief, and we filed at the beginning of
two thousand fifteen, and some of the things in the
emotion scientific and medical expert witness opinions were cited that
(27:42):
proved that short distance falls like the one that little
Olivia took from the playpen, can cause serious injury and death,
and had led the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to
warn about the potentially lethal danger of short distance falls
from playpens, shopping carts, child seats, and high chairs. They
also presented evidence demonstrating that the States claimed that Olivia
(28:04):
was too young to climb out of her playpen was
patently false. They presented a two thousand eleven study examining
the injuries associated with cribs, playpens, and bassonets of a
hundred and eighty one thousand, six fifty four children younger
than two years old. So this is like boom right. Yeah.
What that study showed is that children fall out of
(28:27):
playpens and cribs relatively frequently, and they relatively frequently do
it on their own. So fast forward now to two
thousand and twenty, when Amanda was granted an evidential hearing,
they could have led to a new trial, right, but
within days of the hearing that was planned for early September,
the state prosecutors came along and offered you a deal, Amanda. Right.
(28:48):
They said that if you stopped pressing your innocence in
court that you could go home immediately rather than roll
the dice, I guess, because even if the conviction was
overturned at the new trial, you could still faced an
additional twenty years if you've been convicted again. Of course,
who knows what they could have convicted you up. So
how did you feel at this point? I mean, here
you were. Now you've got the fantastic representation, people who
(29:11):
not only really believe with you, but are eminently qualified
and had actually done exactly what they set out to do,
which is proven that you were as innocent as you
always said that you were. And now here comes this
Sophie's choice. Really, right, after a certain amount of time
that I had been incarcerated, I actually became a law
clerk and started helping others on their cases. And after
(29:31):
time and time again of seeing just how badly the
system would railroad people, I just lost all faith in
justice period. So I just came to a point where
it's like, what do I do here? And at that
point my family needed me more than I needed to
keep the fight going and risk still not being able
(29:53):
to be there for them because it was no longer
about right or wrong. It was all about making sure
that I was doing what was right for family, even
if it meant that I had to just accept the
deal and go home. It's not hard for me to
understand why you did what you did, even as hard
as it must have been. So now you're free, And
(30:13):
how has it been now that you've been free and
home for a year. I have been incredibly blessed because
I have an amazing husband, I have an amazing support system,
so I didn't require a lot of external resources to
get back on my feet. If it wasn't for that,
I don't know how well I could have fared well. Amanda.
(30:34):
All I can say is you are a hero to
me and so many other people hearing your story. Now
we have what I always say is my favorite part
of the show. This is the part of the show
that I think our listeners have come to expect them
look forward to as well, which is called closing arguments.
And closing arguments works like this. I thank you both again,
(30:56):
Kate Judson and Amanda Brumfield for being here and taking
your time out to share this very very important story.
And then I'm going to kick back in my chair,
turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on and
just listen. Kate. I'll due respect to you, but we're
gonna say the best for last, and that's Amanda. She's
the star, and we're going to let you share whatever
(31:17):
else you want to share with our audience and with me,
and then you can just pass the mic off to Amanda,
and that's how we'll close out the show. Well, one
of the things that I haven't gotten a chance to
do yet is saying Amanda's praises. Amanda's story getting out
there is I'm sure going to help others, But Amanda
has already helped others. When she was inside the walls
(31:39):
and she was helping in the law library as a
law clerk, I know that she was helping other women
with their cases, and in fact, she was a big
part of why another one of our clients came to
us and was also freed right around the same time.
And so I know that Amanda has directly helped lots
more people than I know about. But I can point
(32:00):
to at least one person who's free today in part
because of her advocacy. And I'm just so impressed by
what she's been able to do since she's been out.
I know not from personal experience, but from talking to
other folks who have been released, how very, very hard
it is. But she's handling it with such strength and grace,
and I am so impressed. And what I would also
(32:23):
like people to know is that there are still accusations
being made under this same paradigm, under the same hypothesis,
and they're happening all the time. And while it's true
that children are abused, and that children can be seriously
injured or killed because of abuse, it's also true that
(32:43):
abuse can be misdiagnosed with absolutely tragic consequences. No tragic
because an innocent person can go to prison like happened
to Amanda. An innocent person can end up on death row,
as has happened to um some of the other folks
on Who's Behalf we advocate, And even if someone doesn't
(33:04):
go to prison, it can tear families apart as it
works its way through both the criminal justice system and
the child custody system. The other thing is that if
a child is ill and their misdiagnosed as haven't been abused,
they don't get the treatment for their illness that they
should get, or it's delayed, and so it's critically important
that we re examine the way we look at these
(33:25):
cases and the incredible power that we allow a small
collection of doctors to have over people's lives. Amanda, First,
I just want to say I'm incredibly humbled and grateful
to even have the opportunity to get this word out
and to be a part of something as big as
an innocence movement like this. My biggest hope is that
(33:48):
people will start to pay attention and not just allow
media to determine how they see someone. That's how a
lot of wrongful convictions happened. We don't use our own intuition,
in our own minds to see what is real and
what it's not. Instead, we're just quick to convict in
our own minds and our own hearts, not knowing the
(34:10):
circumstances or the facts, and just believing in theatrics and
oh well, it must be right because it was on
the news. We have to stand on our own feet
and we have to listen. If it was not for
the Innocence Project, if it wasn't for Kate, if it
wasn't for Seth Melissa. In the beginning, Christa, everyone every
step of the way worked so hard to get me home,
(34:30):
and as much as it pained me to have to
accept a plea, at the same time, we still one
because now I can be out here and help someone
else to not end up in this same situation, and
I can be a voice for somebody who may not
have one. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction. I'd
(34:54):
like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden,
Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wards, with research by Lila Robinson.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast,
and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
(35:15):
Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also
follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason
flop ralevul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good
Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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