Media Contact: Kathryn Hamoudah 404/688-1202 or [email protected] 

ATLANTA, GA–Today, the Supreme Court of Georgia, in a unanimous decision, vacated the lower court decision and ordered the case be sent back to the trial court to apply the correct legal framework in deciding Mr. Smith’s extraordinary motion for a new trial. Danyel Smith was convicted in 2003 of murder following the death of his 2-month-old son, Chandler, based on a theory of “shaken baby syndrome.” His lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights and The Koehler Firm argued that powerful science-and-medicine-based evidence today demonstrates that Chandler did not die due to abuse, and that Mr. Smith is actually innocent. The Supreme Court today ruled that, in finding against Mr. Smith, the lower court misapplied the law.

Following advances in science and medicine that today have undermined that diagnosis, Mr. Smith filed an Extraordinary Motion for New Trial in the Gwinnett County Superior Court.  The trial court initially dismissed the motion without a hearing, but in 2022 the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously reversed.  Shortly after the Georgia Supreme Court’s remand, the prosecution offered Danyel Smith a plea to time-served—a plea that would have undone his life sentence immediately and allowed him to walk free from prison after twenty years. Mr. Smith rejected the offer because he did not want to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit.

This past spring, Mr. Smith presented the testimony of eight expert witnesses in support of his argument that new evidence demonstrates that Chandler’s tragic death was due to medical complications dating back to his premature birth, not abuse. Despite this comprehensive evidentiary presentation, the court signed an order written by the prosecution denying the motion.

“We are grateful to the Georgia Supreme Court for reversing the trial court’s order and sending it back to apply the correct law,” said Mark Loudon-Brown, Senior Attorney in SCHR’s Capital Litigation Unit who argued in front of the Georgia Supreme Court. “We hope the trial court will move swiftly on remand to grant Mr. Smith a new trial following today’s powerful decision.”