During Josh’s civil and criminal trials, a total of five doctors testified in his defense, arguing Naomi’s medical condition was not conclusive for abuse. They pointed to a crucial factor: Naomi’s traumatic birth. Brenda labored for four hours before hospital staff unsuccessfully attempted to extract Naomi with a vacuum device. When the baby finally emerged during an emergency cesarean section, she had a baseball-sized bruise on her scalp. The birth likely caused initial, unnoticed bleeding on the membrane surrounding her brain.

[Editor’s note: Josh and Brenda Burns are members of Pathway PCA church in Brighton, Michigan.]

HOWELL, Mich.—In a Michigan probate courtroom on March 19, three or four dozen spectators watched attorney Betsy Geyer Sedore hold up enlarged photos of a fair-skinned, dark-eyed baby girl named Naomi Burns.

A few feet away sat the baby’s father, Josh Burns, a bulky, bearded man wearing a yellow striped tie and showing little emotion.

“Naomi is the victim here,” said Sedore, an assistant prosecutor in Livingston County, Mich. “The focus needs to be on the child … not on the mother and father.” Twelve months earlier, medics had rushed the baby to the emergency room with vomiting, bleeding on the brain, and seizures. Doctors struggled to find the cause of her illness. The only recent accident the parents, Josh and Brenda Burns, said they knew of was a short tumble from Josh’s knee.

“What he says happened is not what happened. It doesn’t explain it,” said Sedore, raising her voice and describing Josh as a man with a temper, a drinking problem, and an assault record. “He’s not telling the truth.”

Sedore asked the judge, Miriam Cavanaugh, to give a proportionate jail sentence. Sedore had already convinced a 12-member jury a few weeks earlier to find Josh guilty of abusing Naomi by shaking her violently or repeatedly slamming her head into a soft surface.

But few in the audience for the sentencing hearing seemed to believe that account. Outside the courthouse, dozens of Josh’s supporters held signs protesting his innocence. His wife, parents, in-laws, and pastor say the idea he intentionally harmed his daughter is preposterous.

The pivotal issue in the case is the diagnosis doctors ultimately gave to Naomi: abusive head trauma, better known as shaken baby syndrome. Doctors often diagnose the syndrome when they can find no underlying cause for brain swelling, bleeding on the brain’s surface, and bleeding at the back of the eyes.

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