Georgia’s highest court to hear case of dad convicted of killing infant son

Gwinnett County, Ga. (InvestigateTV) - The state’s highest court will soon decide whether a man convicted of killing his infant son more than 20 years ago will get a new trial.

The case involves the controversial medical diagnosis, shaken baby syndrome. In 2003, a Gwinnett County jury convicted Danyel Smith of murdering his two-month-old son, Chandler. The state’s medical examiner ruled the boy’s death a homicide, caused by blunt force trauma. Prosecutors told the jury it was a “shaken baby” case.

In April 2024, Smith pleaded with Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor to grant him a new trial following nearly two weeks of testimony from medical experts who testified the child’s death points to biological issues.

“I asked myself if I could live with that decision for the rest of my life and the answer is no,” Smith told the court. “Only a guilty man would plead out.

“Not every tragedy is a crime,” Smith said. “I’m not a murderer. I did not kill my son.”

Batchelor - who retired from the bench this past August - denied his request for a new trial. But this past November, the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal to determine if Batchelor erred and whether Smith deserves a new trial based on new medical testimony offered up during the hearing.

Dr. Saadi Ghatan, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and seven other medical experts testified on Smith’s behalf in the April 2024 hearing.

After reviewing the child’s medical records, Dr. Ghatan believes Chandler didn’t die from shaking, but likely from trauma during birth.

“This looks nothing like someone who was abused,” he testified. “It looks like somebody who had hypoxic anoxic brain damage.”

For decades, pediatric traumatic brain injuries could only be explained with blunt force trauma like car accidents, falls or violently shaking a child. Today, new science shows those same injuries can be linked to illnesses and biological issues, like seizure disorders.

Since 2019, nearly two dozen people charged with crimes connected to shaken baby diagnoses have had their convictions overturned or their cases dismissed.

Forty-eight law professors across the country, including the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, filed a brief in the case in of Smith’s case.

“This was not a he-said, she-said type of case; it was a he-said, and-the-experts-said, and-the-scientific-community-said, and-multiple-courts-have-subsequently-said type of case,” said the attorneys in their brief.

“The science and the courts continue to overwhelmingly say that diagnosis of the kind that was used to convict Mr. Smith are unreliable and should be remedied,” said Mark Louden-Brown, Smith’s attorney who works for the Southern Center for Human Rights.

The Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office declined comment.

Smith could be home with his family today, but he declined a plea deal from the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office in 2023 that would have required him to it guilt.

Latasha Pyatt met Smith in July 2015; they have never known each other outside prison walls, but nevertheless got engaged four years ago.

During that time, Pyatt filled her home with some of Smith’s favorite things: clothes, cologne and even a car. He’s never seen any of it.

“I didn’t blink then; I’m not blinking now,” Pyatt said. “You just don’t throw your hands up and give up, especially when you know somebody is innocent.”

Pyatt realizes people question her being in a relationship with a convicted murderer with no guarantee she’ll ever see him free from behind bars. Her response: Look at the evidence.

Dispatch records show that two weeks before Chandler’s death, his mother, Marsha Brandon, called 911 after she thought the child “was coming in and out of a seizure.” Chandler was born prematurely at 36 weeks.

Paramedics dismissed her concerns, saying the “baby was just having hiccups.” In an interview with investigators at the time, Brandon praised Smith, calling him “Mr. Mom” who “takes good care of the baby.”

But Chandler’s mother doesn’t believe Smith deserves a new trial. “Those things just didn’t happen and those weren’t natural causes,” Brandon said in a 2022 interview with our investigators.

“What I am sure of is that Chandler died at the hands of Danyel Smith.”

Pyatt said she and her fiancé don’t regret taking the plea offer.

“He would [be free], but you know what? He will be here today on parole,” Pyatt said. “It’s just like he’s still in prison.”

Smith’s attorney could argue the case before the Georgia Supreme Court sometime this spring.

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