Posted: 2008.07.14
Audrey Edmunds, a client of the Wisconsin Innocence Project who was wrongly convicted in 1996 of killing an infant in her care, won complete freedom on July 11, 2008, when the state dismissed all charges against her.
Edmunds had been convicted of reckless homicide and served 11 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained her innocence, denying that she had shaken seven-month-old Natalie Beard. The Wisconsin Innocence Project, a program of the University of Wisconsin Law School, won her a new trial in January 2008 by presenting new medical evidence that had emerged in the years since her first trial. In granting Edmunds a new trial, the state's Fourth District Court of Appeals cited "significant controversy" in the medical field about shaken baby syndrome.
After the Wisconsin Innocence Project succeeded in winning a new trial for Edmunds, it turned the case over to new trial counsel, Stephen Hurley, who represented Edmunds at the July 11 hearing dismissing all charges.
For more information, see www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/295777 .
