Ha’im Al Matin Sharif (pic­tured), for­mer­ly known as Charles Robins, has been released from Nevada’s death row, near­ly 30 years after he was con­vict­ed of killing his girl­friend’s 11-month-old daugh­ter, after med­ical evi­dence revealed that the baby died from infan­tile scurvy, rather than from phys­i­cal abuse. Prosecutors agreed to amend the charges against Sharif and release him on time served after a pros­e­cu­tion doc­tor con­firmed that Brittany Smith actu­al­ly died of Barlow’s dis­ease, a form of scurvy affect­ing infants. The child’s autop­sy showed bro­ken bones and hem­or­rhages, a local med­ical exam­in­er list­ed the cause of death as blunt force trau­ma, and Las Vegas police accused Sharif of tor­tur­ing her. ​“I was con­fused as to the nature of the injuries they described, because I had done noth­ing,” Sharif said. The child’s moth­er ini­tial­ly told police that Sharif was not abu­sive, but then tes­ti­fied against him. She lat­er recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny and told Sharif’s appel­late attor­ney that police had coerced her into pro­vid­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing Sharif by threat­en­ing to take her oth­er chil­dren away. During Sharif’s appeals, med­ical experts who reviewed the baby’s X‑rays to rule out dis­ease as the cause of death said the injuries were like­ly caused by scurvy. The Nevada Supreme Court ordered that the case be sent back to the tri­al court, writ­ing, ​“We are sat­is­fied that Robins has pre­sent­ed spe­cif­ic fac­tu­al alle­ga­tions that, if true, would show that it is more like­ly than not that no rea­son­able juror would have con­vict­ed him of first-degree mur­der and child abuse beyond a rea­son­able doubt or found the sin­gle aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance used to make him death eli­gi­ble.” Prosecutors agreed to a deal in which Sharif would plead guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der and be sen­tenced to time served. Although Sharif con­tin­ues to main­tain his inno­cence, he agreed to the reduc­tion in charges to obtain his imme­di­ate release. Sharif’s case is the lat­est in a grow­ing num­ber of cas­es in which men and women have been wrong­ly sen­tenced to death based upon erro­neous foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny that they had mur­dered a child, when the chil­dren had actu­al­ly died from nat­ur­al or acci­den­tal caus­es. Rodricus Crawford was exon­er­at­ed in Louisiana in 2017 on evi­dence that his one-year-old son died of pneu­mo­nia and sep­sis, not suf­fo­ca­tion. Sabrina Butler was just 17 years old when her infant son died. She spent five years on death row in Mississippi before she was acquit­ted at a retri­al, where she pre­sent­ed evi­dence that her child died of a hered­i­tary kid­ney con­di­tion. Others have been con­demned for the deaths of their chil­dren in cas­es that junk-sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny mis­at­trib­uted to arson: Texas exe­cut­ed Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 based on faulty fire tes­ti­mo­ny; in 2006, after more than 15 years on Pennsylvania’s death row, Dennis Counterman agreed to enter a no-con­test plea to third-degree mur­der and was released. 

(M. Kiefer, ​“The long jour­ney from death row to free­dom: Arizona lawyer’s sleuthing frees mur­der con­vict,” The Arizona Republic, June 15, 2017; C. Ryan, ​“Court orders hear­ing on new evi­dence for death row inmate,” Las Vegas Sun, September 26, 2016.) See Innocence.

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