Nevada Death-Row Prisoner Released on Plea Deal After Medical Evidence Suggests No Crime Occurred

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.