GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — The Georgia Supreme Court handed a Gwinnett County man a legal victory Wednesday in his decades-long fight to overturn a murder conviction that’s kept him behind bars since 2002.
Danyel Smith, 50, has been imprisoned for the death of his two-month-old son, Chandler. Prosecutors argued Smith violently shook the infant, but his attorneys now say evolving medical science proves their client is innocent. A jury convicted him in 2003.
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Smith’s commitment to maintaining his innocence has been unwavering. In 2023, he rejected a plea deal that would have immediately freed him after 20 years behind bars if he admitted guilt, according to his legal team.
“He wasn’t going to admit to something he didn’t do,” said Mark Loudon-Brown, a senior attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights who represents Smith.
The high court vacated a September 2024 order by now-retired Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor and instructed the trial court to apply a correct legal framework when reviewing Smith’s extraordinary motion for a new trial.
Smith’s legal team presented eight expert witnesses last year who testified that Chandler died from complications related to his premature birth, not abuse.
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“He was actually a very sick child from birth until two months old,” Loudon-Brown said. “That all went overlooked at the time because the diagnostic approach was presumed abuse.”
However, Batchelor’s 30-page order found the defense experts unreliable. The order stated that “based on all the latest developments in medical knowledge, it is now ‘more certain’ in 2024 that the victim died from abusive head trauma than in 2002.”
“We’re very grateful for the opinion and for the Supreme Court reversing this clearly erroneous lower court order,” Loudon-Brown said.
It’s unclear when the next court date will be scheduled.
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