Montana group helps father appeal conviction
Innocence Project claims man didn’t kill infant son
MISSOULA – The Montana Innocence Project is appealing the conviction of a Missoula man sentenced to 40 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of shaking his 3-month-old son to death.
The Missoulian reports that the Innocence Project contends 38-year-old Robert J. Wilkes had an ineffective public defender and his son suffered from a rare and often fatal liver disorder.
“There can be no greater tragedy in this world than the untimely death of an infant,” the Innocence Project wrote in the appeal filed recently in Missoula County District Court. “Nothing can be done to bring Gabriel back to his family. But just as surely, Robert Wilkes was unjustly convicted of a terrible crime. That wrong can now be righted.”
Wilkes was convicted of deliberate homicide in December 2009 for the October 2008 death of Gabriel Wilkes. He has denied harming his son, but medical experts testified that the infant’s injuries were equivalent to a fall from a 2- or 3-story window or a car crash.
Dr. Rich Kaplan, a certified child abuse pediatrician from Minnesota, testified that the infant had injuries consistent with abusive head trauma. But the Innocence Project had two experts review Gabriel’s medical records, and arrived at conclusions different from Kaplan’s.
“The failure to present a balanced view of current medical information by the defense, coupled with the prosecution’s reliance on medical dogma that is rapidly being superseded, resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” wrote Peter J. Stephens, a North Carolina forensic pathologist.
He said Gabriel Wilkes suffered from a liver disorder called neonatal hemochromatosis, which could be the cause of some of Gabriel’s injuries.
And Dr. Joseph M. Scheller, a pediatric neurologist in Maryland, said the infant had a chronic subdural hemorrhage likely caused by a mildly traumatic birth.
“Infants who suffer from cerebral venous sinus thrombosis are often mistaken for victims of abusive head injury,” Scheller wrote. “This unfortunately was the case with Gabriel, he did not suffer abuse; he died from a rare but real medical condition.”
A baby sitter who had been watching Gabriel on Oct. 4, 2008, said Wilkes picked up his son but returned to her apartment about an hour later and asked her to call 911.
The infant was treated at a hospital in Spokane, where he was declared brain dead and removed from life support. He died several weeks later in hospice care.
Wilkes testified that he didn’t know what happened to his son, but that the baby wasn’t hurt while under his supervision.
“It makes me angry that my son is dead. It makes me angry that I’m the one accused of his death,” Wilkes testified at his 2009 trial. “I don’t know who did it. But I had no reason to be mad at my son. He was 3 months old.”
The phone for Assistant Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney Suzy Boylan, who prosecuted Wilkes, went unanswered when called by the Associated Press last Sunday.