A Nashville medical examiner who was a key part in imprisoning a father for killing his baby is recanting his testimony 24 years later .
Dr. Bruce Levy is walking back on his assessment that baby Alex Maze (whose legal name is Bryan) died of shaken baby syndrome. His testimony helped put the infant's father Russell Maze in prison for life, ProPublica reported.
“I recant my trial testimony that Bryan Maze suffered from shaken baby syndrome ,” Dr. Levy stated in a sworn affidavit. “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, who was Nashville's medical examiner for 13 years, went on to state that he would now classify the child’s manner of death as “natural.” The Nashville district attorney’s office, through its conviction-review unit, began reinvestigating the case in 2023, and found new scientific evidence that suggested Alex died not from shaking but an undiagnosed, underlying condition.
Records show that the first five weeks of Alex's life included 13 days in a neonatal intensive care unit, and health problems that forced his parents to seek medical attention seven different times in the three weeks that followed. Kaye Maze's obstetric records documented a troubled pregnancy and premature birth- the only issue is that Levy was never privy to this information.
“I do not believe many of these records were previously provided for my review,” Levy wrote in the affidavit. 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. At both of Russell’s trials, prosecutors presented evidence that they said showed Alex was a victim of shaken baby syndrome.
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.
The shaking was so forceful that: “children who fall from three or four floors onto concrete will get a similar brain injury," she said. Dr. Levy's trial testimony directly contributed to Russell’s conviction, but after reviewing the original medical examiner’s file, which included his 2000 autopsy report, photos and slides, he has come to a different conclusion.
“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.”
Dr. Levy's recanting could be pivotal in overturning Maze's conviction, but it is not guaranteed. After hearing two days of testimony from medial experts who found no evidence that Alex had been shaken a lower-court judge still concluded “The court does not find an injustice nor that the petitioner is actually innocent based on new scientific evidence.”
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.
Judge Steve Dozier, who had overseen Russell’s previous two trials, 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.
Local News
Comments / 0