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A year ago, I got a tip from a source: There was an influential doctor in Minneapolis, a child abuse pediatrician, whose judgment on diagnoses of child abuse had been called into question: Dr. Nancy Harper.
Many months later, I learned the name of another doctor who challenged her: Dr. Bazak Sharon, who worked in the same hospital. |
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He told me that he’d been given a choice after clashing with Harper: resign or be fired. In the first piece of my investigation, I chronicled their dispute and examined how the work of child abuse pediatricians has come under growing skepticism for the frequent use of the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis.
Sharon ultimately resigned, and Harper did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the group that employed both doctors did not respond to a detailed list of questions, but said Harper's team “only makes decisions about diagnoses and subsequent medical care based on expert assessment of medical evidence." and added that “Further investigations and legal determinations are outside of our team’s scope.”
Harper has claimed to have never incorrectly diagnosed a shaken baby syndrome case, but, as I've documented in the second installment of my investigation, some judges and juries seem to disagree. |
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In 2004, Russell Maze was convicted of murdering his infant son. A doctor said the baby had been violently shaken. Maze was sentenced to life in prison.
Since then, shaken baby syndrome has come under increasing scrutiny. Twenty years after Maze’s conviction, attorneys in the conviction-review unit in the Nashville, Tennessee, district attorney’s office came across the case and concluded that Maze was innocent of killing his son.
But would that be enough to overturn his conviction? Last year ProPublica reporter and The New York Times Magazine staff writer Pamela Colloff investigated the story, which follows conviction-review unit director Sunny Eaton. Listen as Eaton breaks down what happened and what it reveals about innocence projects nationwide. |
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Is FEMA Funding Drying Up? |
The Federal Emergency Management Agency operates roughly a dozen preparedness grant programs. Much of the money ensures that states and counties can employ emergency managers who help communities prepare for and respond to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other events. But, as ProPublica reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote about last week, the agency still has not opened applications for that money — leaving some of the most rural, low-income counties at risk of not having an emergency manager on the payroll should a disaster strike. Here’s what else to know:
- FEMA has blown through the mid-May statutory deadline to start the grants’ application process with no word about why or what that might indicate.
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FEMA also quietly withdrew a notice for states to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.
- In June, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began requiring that she review all FEMA grants above $100,000. Former FEMA employees said that could slow its grants process to a crawl.
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States such as North Carolina, still recovering from Hurricane Helene, could be hit particularly hard. Read ProPublica’s reporting on Helene’s unheard warnings and five lessons for the next big storm.
FEMA did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the missed application deadline or the impact of funding cuts and delays, instead responding with a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin that Noem is focused on bringing accountability to FEMA’s spending by “rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and working to ensure only grants that really help Americans in time of need are approved.” |
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