Jennifer Gaskin, right, and her mother Barbara Levesque leave the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Toronto on Tuesday. Ms. Gaskin spent 18 months in prison after her conviction in 2002.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
After decades of feeling like she was seen as a monster, Jennifer Gaskin broke into sobs Tuesday morning as her “shaken baby” conviction was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
To Ms. Gaskin’s right, in the Toronto courtroom, sat her mother, who she said has never doubted her innocence. To her left was her daughter, the baby’s sister, who was removed from Ms. Gaskin’s care after her arrest more than 25 years ago. The mother and daughter had only just reunited for the first time on the eve of Ms. Gaskin’s long-sought hearing.
“I feel wonderful. I feel lighter. I feel like years and years have been taken off my life right now,” Ms. Gaskin, 51, told reporters outside the Toronto courthouse Tuesday morning, after the court officially acknowledged her case as a wrongful conviction.
The Crown and defence had submitted jointly to the court that Ms. Gaskin’s 2002 manslaughter conviction – for the “shaken baby” death of her infant son Joeseph, in July, 1999 – should be overturned, and an acquittal entered in its place.
Jennifer Gaskin smiles as she holds a T-shirt that reads "innocent" after leaving the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, September 29, 2026.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
They agreed the science behind shaken baby syndrome diagnoses – which were often applied in cases of infant death when there were internal, but no external, head injuries – simply does not hold up today.
“She should not have been convicted, and she has endured tremendous hardship as a result,” Crown lawyer Elise Nakelsky told the panel of judges at Tuesday’s hearing.
Justices Sally Gomery, Peter Lauwers and Renee Pomerance agreed.
“This is another in the sad litany of cases of wrongful convictions based on the discredited ‘shaken baby syndrome’ as the cause of a child’s death brought about, in part, by unreliable expert evidence,” Justice Lauwers told the court, as he read out the panel’s decision Tuesday.
The term shaken baby syndrome was coined in the early 1970s and it became a go-to diagnosis for pathologists in cases where infants had a “triad” of internal symptoms that included brain swelling, retinal bleeding and tissue damage to the brain lining. But it came under scrutiny in the early 2000s, when some experts began to dispute the validity of the diagnosis.
In Ontario, an inquiry into errors by Charles Smith, a former forensic pathologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, uncovered more than a dozen child-death cases that were tainted by flawed analyses.
Jennifer Gaskin stands with members of her legal team, James Lockyer, left, and Jack Gemmell, after leaving the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, September 29, 2026.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
An expert committee was established in 2008 by the Ontario government to specifically probe shaken-baby deaths in the province dating back to the 1980s – including Ms. Gaskin’s son’s case.
Baby Joeseph was nine-and-a-half weeks premature when he was born in April, 1999. He spent two months in hospital before he was finally able to go home to Ms. Gaskin in Ignace, Ont., in mid-June.
On July 2, just two days after Ms. Gaskin brought him to her local health clinic, concerned about vomiting and possible dehydration, Joeseph suddenly stopped breathing. Ms. Gaskin’s boyfriend, who had been changing the baby’s diaper at the time, sought help from a neighbour, and then called an ambulance, but the baby was pronounced dead soon after.
An autopsy was performed by a surgical pathologist at the Thunder Bay Hospital, and a second opinion was sought from a neuropathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Both concluded the baby died of head injuries from multiple instances of shaking, over a period of roughly two weeks – which Ms. Gaskin had vehemently denied.
But the Crown argued the finding successfully at her jury trial, and she was sentenced to two years less a day in prison.
Her surviving children – a daughter, just 13 months at the time that Joeseph died, and a son who was born while Ms. Gaskin was on bail, awaiting trial – were taken from her, and adopted by families in Dryden, about an hour away. (Her surviving children’s names are covered by a publication ban.)
Ms. Gaskin leaves the Court of Appeal for Ontario.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
As part of the fresh evidence in her appeal, Ms. Gaskin’s legal team submitted the findings of the province’s review committee, along with new reports from a forensic neuropathologist, a biomechanical engineer and a forensic pathologist.
The reports concluded that while it would be difficult to rule out an inflicted injury, natural causes could also have been to blame for Joeseph’s cardiorespiratory arrest – and that some of the injuries cited after his death were likely caused by the autopsy itself. They also point out that more substantial testing would be done after a death like this today than was conducted (or even possible) at the time.
In Tuesday’s decision, the panel of judges noted this fresh evidence shows Ms. Gaskin’s conviction is “unsustainable.”
“As this court has stated in similar cases, it bears repeating that it is profoundly regrettable that, because of what has been shown to be flawed pathological evidence, Ms. Gaskin was wrongly convicted,” the decision reads.
“Although this was not one of disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith’s, this case took the same flawed approach to the applicable forensic science,” Justice Lauwers said, as he read the panel’s decision Tuesday.
Outside court Tuesday, Ms. Gaskin’s lawyer, veteran wrongful convictions lawyer and Innocence Canada co-founder James Lockyer, praised the judge’s decision, and said it was “an important day.”
“It may be the beginning of the end, if not the end, of shaken baby syndrome – at least in Ontario, potentially in Canada,” he said.
“To refer to it as a ‘discredited’ science was really a giant leap forward in the jurisprudence, and it will make it easier for any other cases that we may have coming up.”
He said Innocence Canada, a non-profit that advocates for wrongfully convicted individuals, is pursuing the overturning of “more than one” other case involving shaken baby syndrome.
Ms. Gaskin now lives in Eastern Ontario, where she works as a restaurant hostess. For years, she wrote in an affidavit to the court, she felt unable to breathe freely, keeping her story to herself, feeling people viewed her as a monster. But with the burden of her conviction lifted, she said she looks forward to going home and living her “best life.”
“I’m so appreciative of everything the court did today,” she said. “They took my life and they made it right.”
She is grateful, most of all, that the case has allowed her to reunite with her daughter – and she hopes, one day soon, her son.
“I hope that all of this will give me a chance to bond with my kids, and ... to just make everything else right,” she said. “And we will, bit by bit.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated shortly after its initial publication to correct the attribution of a quote from Crown lawyer Elise Nakelsky. It was initially misattributed to Justice Peter Lauwers.