Witness Explains Reversal In Burlington Doctor's Shaken Baby Case

BURLINGTON, MA — A former Massachusetts Medical Examiner's office employee said she changed a 2014 finding in the autopsy of a death of a six-month-old baby after reading medical articles that contradicted her previous beliefs on the case. Anna McDonald, who was performing her first autopsy involving suspected fatal baby shaken syndrome, testified before a Middlesex Superior Court jury Monday in the case of Pallavi Macharla, 45, the Burlington doctor who was the baby's babysitter and is on trial for her death. McDonald left the office to take a similar job in North Carolina after performing the autopsy on Ridhima Dhekane, but reversed her opinion on the cause of death to "undetermined" more than a year later.

McDonald, according to the Boston Globe, was initially influenced by an article given to her by Dr. Henry Nields, the chief medical examiner, that said ruptured blood vessels in a child's eyes at autopsy are a "black-and-white" sign of shaken baby syndrome. But she later read those ruptured blood vessels could have other causes and began to wonder if they had been caused by doctors trying to revive the child after she choked on applesauce, as Macharla claims.

"I didn’t explore, to my discredit, are there controversies about this topic? And what else should I do to arrive at the correct diagnosis?" McDonald testified.

Nields, who supervised the autopsy, disagreed with McDonald and refused to change the death certificate. He is scheduled to testify Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Macharla shook the baby on March 27, 2014. The baby was rushed to Boston Children's Hospital, where she died three days later. Macharla, 43, had told investigators the girl vomited after feeding and then became unresponsive.

Macharla was released on $25,000 bail in December 2015 after the state Medical Examiners Office reversed its decision that the baby died after being violently shaken. Diagnostic tests and studies were performed, which revealed the baby was suffering from diffuse subdural hemorrhaging, diffuse subarachnoid hemorrhaging, diffuse and multilayered bilateral retinal hemorrhages and retinoschisis.