COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Months had passed, and still Rick Crowl couldn't purge images of the Lehmer baby from his mind.
There'd been no obvious wounds on the 3-month-old, nothing you could see. No signs of massive trauma; no signs of any trauma. No skull fracture, no collarbone bruises, no head injuries, no bleeding in the eyes, no gross bleeding under the scalp. Yet Thomas Bennett, the state medical examiner, had diagnosed shaken-slammed baby syndrome. Thomas Bennett had called Jonathan's death a homicide.
So that's what Crowl had called it too. The prosecutor for Pottawattamie County had gone along with Bennett, even though he'd thought the autopsy report looked mighty thin. He'd filed first-degree murder charges against the Lehmer baby's parents. He'd put Joel Lehmer and Teresa Engberg-Lehmer in state prison for 15 years.
He'd never felt good about it, though. Almost any other prosecutor would savor his victory. Crowl stewed. He had abiding questions. The truth was, he'd almost been waiting for this day.
It was late on April 6, 1998. All afternoon, a defense attorney from halfway across the state had been standing over the prosecutor's copy machine, duplicating the Lehmer file. Crowl watched him now. Stephen Brennecke meant to appeal the Lehmer case. He looked to be a straight-arrow, levelheaded sort.
"You ever handle a case like this before?" Crowl asked.
"Yes, I have," Brennecke said. "The Weaver case."
Crowl knew of the Weaver case. It was another one that involved Thomas Bennett--and another one that raised questions.
Crowl liked and respected Bennett, knowing the state medical examiner to be expert at recognizing the type of indirect brain injuries caused by the shaking of infants. Recently, though, other doctors had started to question publicly some of Bennett's diagnoses. There'd been letters to the editor, letters to state officials. Some had been pretty disturbing.
There'd been claims that Bennett overreached, that he over-diagnosed, that he was overzealous. Where Bennett had found obvious signs of violent abuse, other doctors had found nothing. In one case up in Charles City, they'd stopped a murder trial on the third day of jury selection when prosecutors couldn't find any medical experts to support Bennett's diagnosis. In another over in Decorah, the prosecutor, faced with half a dozen doctors willing to challenge Bennett's diagnosis, had declined to file charges.
