Medical Examiner, Whose Testimony Helped Convict a Man in 2004 of Killing His Baby, Now Says He Was Wrong

by Pamela Colloff

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The Nashville, Tennessee, medical examiner who determined 24 years ago that Russell and Kaye Maze’s young son, Alex, was the victim of homicide — a finding that helped persuade a jury to send Russell to prison for life — now says he was wrong.

“I recant my trial testimony that Bryan Maze suffered from shaken baby syndrome,” Dr. Bruce Levy stated in a sworn affidavit, which used the child’s legal name. “If called to testify now, I would assert Bryan Maze’s brain, at the time of his death, showed no indication, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, of prior trauma or abuse. Instead, the residual brain lesions viewed at autopsy more likely than not resulted from a natural disease process.”

Levy went on to state that he would now classify the child’s manner of death as “natural.”

In July, the Maze case was the subject of an in-depth article by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, which examined new scientific evidence that suggested Alex died not from shaking but an undiagnosed, underlying condition. That evidence first came to light when the Nashville district attorney’s office, through its conviction-review unit, began reinvestigating the case in 2023. The ProPublica-Times story explored the challenges in overturning convictions, even when prosecutors themselves determine that the underlying evidence no longer stands up to scrutiny.

Russell Maze stood trial twice. He was convicted before Alex’s death of aggravated child abuse and after Alex’s death of murder. He is currently serving a life sentence.

Levy’s affidavit, which was filed on Monday with the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, marks a watershed moment in the Maze case. Because his trial testimony directly contributed to Russell’s conviction, Levy’s recantation will be hard for the courts to ignore. Whether this is enough to persuade the courts to set aside Russell’s conviction remains to be seen. But it offers a lifeline to a defendant whose chances of relief dramatically narrowed in May when a lower-court judge, after hearing two days of testimony from multiple experts who found no evidence that Alex had been shaken, nevertheless concluded, “The court does not find an injustice nor that the petitioner is actually innocent based on new scientific evidence.”

The affidavit also creates a highly unusual situation: Now both the DA’s office and the original medical examiner agree that the crime for which Russell was convicted never occurred.

At both of Russell’s trials, prosecutors presented evidence that they said showed Alex was a victim of shaken baby syndrome. The diagnosing doctor, Suzanne Starling, told jurors that internal bleeding around Alex’s brain and eyes indicated that he endured a ferocious act of violence by shaking. “You would be appalled at what this looked like,” she testified at Russell’s first trial. So forceful was the shaking, she added, that “children who fall from three or four floors onto concrete will get a similar brain injury.”

But in the years since the infant was rushed to the emergency room, shaken baby syndrome has come under increasing scrutiny. A growing body of research has demonstrated that the triad of symptoms doctors traditionally used to diagnose the syndrome — brain swelling and bleeding around the brain and behind the eyes — are not necessarily produced by shaking; a range of natural and accidental causes can generate the same symptoms.

“If called to testify today,” Levy stated in his affidavit, “I would refute the previous testimony of Dr. Suzanne Starling that Bryan Maze was definitely a victim of shaken baby syndrome and that there was no other explanation for his condition.”

Before reaching his new conclusion, Levy reviewed the original medical examiner’s file, which included his 2000 autopsy report, photos and slides. He also studied medical records that the CRU provided him this summer. Those records gave essential context about the health challenges that Alex faced before his father called 911 on May 3, 1999, to report that the 5-week-old had stopped breathing.

The records documented Alex’s first five weeks of life, which included 13 days in a neonatal intensive care unit, and health problems that spurred his parents to seek medical attention seven different times in the three weeks that followed. Levy also examined Kaye’s obstetric records, which documented her troubled pregnancy and Alex’s preterm birth.

“I do not believe many of these records were previously provided for my review,” Levy, who was the Nashville medical examiner for 13 years, wrote in the affidavit.

Levy also reviewed reports written by experts in the fields of pathology, radiology and neonatology, who reexamined the evidence in the case last year as part of the CRU’s probe.

Those experts testified at a hearing in March before Judge Steve Dozier, who had overseen Russell’s previous two trials. “Every single medical expert, using current science, confirms that Russell and Kaye Maze are actually innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted,” Nashville DA Glenn Funk told the judge. “It is my duty as district attorney to ask the court to vacate these convictions.”

At that hearing, Dozier pointedly asked about Levy, who — along with Starling, the diagnosing doctor — was not called to testify by the CRU. Its director, Sunny Eaton, and assistant DA Anna Hamilton chose to call medical experts who did not have a record to protect and who could approach the case with fresh eyes.

During the hearing, Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, the chief medical examiner in Knox and Anderson counties, criticized Levy’s original work in the case. “He was a good pathologist,” she said, but she thought he had been “too busy to really dedicate enough time to study this case thoroughly.”

Dozier, who sometimes interrupted witnesses during the hearing with provocative questions, said pointedly, “You’re not busy?”

Mileusnic-Polchan explained that for forensic pathologists who are saddled with heavy workloads, “sometimes the easiest thing is just to copy and paste” previous medical conclusions. She suggested that if Levy had the opportunity to look at the case anew, and took more time with the evidence, that he would see what she saw. “I am almost certain if I were to bring Dr. Levy here and just kind of slow him down —”

“There is no way you can say that,” Dozier said. “Really?”

“I — I think that any pathologist looking at the brain slides —”

Dozier was skeptical of the notion that Levy would take a different stance. “He’s going to admit he was wrong?” the judge asked dismissively.

After two days of testimony and a forceful closing argument from Eaton — “The state got this wrong,” she told the judge — Dozier did not find that there was enough evidence to set aside Russell’s conviction.

Levy, Starling and Dozier did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

The CRU subsequently reached out to Levy and asked him to review the record, including Alex’s full medical history and Kaye’s obstetrics record. Levy could have upheld his previous position or written a more measured reappraisal. Instead, after reviewing all the evidence, he unequivocally rejected his original findings and testimony.

When Levy memorialized his conclusions in his affidavit, the CRU informed Jason Gichner of the Tennessee Innocence Project, who is representing Russell, and Melissa Dix and Daniel Horwitz, who are representing Kaye.

(Kaye, who was not home with her husband when their son became unresponsive in 1999, was charged with aggravated assault. After she was told that having an open criminal case would make it harder for her to regain custody of her son, she took an Alford plea to a reduced felony charge — a plea that allows defendants to accept punishment while maintaining their innocence. Kaye has asked that her conviction be vacated. Her appeal has been consolidated with her husband’s and will move through the courts with his.)

Levy’s affidavit comes as the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals considers whether Dozier was correct, this May, in finding that there was not enough new evidence to set aside Russell’s conviction.

Levy came to Nashville in 1997 to reform a medical examiner’s office that was plagued by backlogs and scandal, and he was praised for restoring integrity to the office. He also became the state’s chief medical examiner. But he lost both jobs after he was arrested in Mississippi in 2010 on a felony marijuana possession charge, for which he entered a pretrial diversion program. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a misconduct charge in Nashville after investigators found that some of the marijuana came from evidence bags from the medical examiner’s office. Levy is currently a professor of pathology and informatics at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals must now decide whether to remand the case back to the trial court, where Levy’s new findings would be presented and entered into evidence. Dozier would then have to weigh whether all of the evidence taken together — both the experts’ testimony from the March hearing and Levy’s new conclusions — is sufficient to vacate Russell’s conviction.

In the meantime, Russell remains at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, a long-troubled prison run by private contractor CoreCivic. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation that it said “will examine whether Tennessee protects those incarcerated at Trousdale Turner from harm, including physical violence and sexual abuse.”

“The safety and dignity of every person in our care is a top priority,” CoreCivic spokesperson Steven Owen said in a statement in August. “We take this matter very seriously and are committed to working closely with both TDOC and USDOJ officials to address areas of concern.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Pamela Colloff.