Family backs Allison in daughter’s ‘shaken baby’ death

WASILLA — Add July 15, 2015, to the list of dreadful days on the calendar for the Allison family.

As with some losses, it’s not just Christmas or birthday holidays that are particularly brutal.

It’s also Valentine’s Day — the day Clayton and Christiane Allison met. It’s their wedding anniversary, their daughter’s birthday, and the day their 15-month-old died.

And it’s the day her father was arrested for her death, the day he was found guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide in her death, and now, tomorrow — the day he will be sentenced for her death.

“Brutal” is a word Christiane Allison uses to describes the last seven years of her life.

For her, there is no comfort in seeing her 32-year-old husband convicted and sentenced. Christiane — who goes by CJ — and the rest of Clayton Allison’s family and friends don’t believe he caused the death of his daughter, Jocelynn Allison, at their home Sept. 24, 2008.

“So much of what I’ve lost in life is wrapped up in this grief,” CJ said. “You have no idea what you are capable of until you have no choice.”

Still, how does a 29-year-old woman emotionally survive the death of her child and her husband’s conviction for their child’s murder?

“I think it boils down to love, largely. I love my husband and my husband is being threatened,” CJ said. “Love is the only thing worth fighting for.”

People who kill children are monsters, society says. Lock him up and throw away the key, we say. In prison, the other inmates will see that he gets what he deserves, we say. They “take care” of baby killers in prison, we say.

But what if the well-dressed young man on the front page of the newspaper, his wife tenderly kissing his cheek, is — as his family and at least one pathologist believes — innocent?

What if, as Clayton told police, Jocelynn accidentally tumbled down eight carpeted steps, striking her head on a chair with a file-box on top and died of her injuries at Providence Alaska Medical Center a few hours later?

What if Jocelynn’s death was a tragic accident and what if the trial, conviction and the last 136 days he’s spent in protective custody in Goose Creek Correctional Center are all in error?

And worse, what if “shaken baby” cases are, in general, based on imprecise science, corroborated by doctors who are not trained as forensic pathologists? What if there is more than one Alaskan behind bars, wrongly convicted of killing a child based on biased or flawed work by doctors tasked with evaluations beyond their medical training?

What if Clayton Allison is innocent?

How I met your mother

Their how-I-met-your-mother story begins like a romantic comedy. The Mat-Su College student government president and the math club president were struck by Cupid’s arrow at a Valentine’s Day bake sale.

He was studying English and she, journalism.

He graduated with a general associate’s degree from Mat-Su College in 2009 and went to work for Hope Community Resources, Guardian Security Systems, and eventually the state. CJ graduated with an associate’s from Mat-Su College and transitioned to the University of Alaska Anchorage to complete her bachelor’s.

Clayton is a gentle, fair-skinned, sandy-haired man who was born at Valley Hospital in Palmer, attended local schools, and worked as a caregiver in the Valley nonprofit community before he was charged with and convicted of his daughter’s death.

CJ is a precocious military brat who moved with her family to Palmer for a second time in 1999. She attended Palmer Junior Middle School and then switched to a correspondence program for high school in 2001, which allowed her to enroll in college classes.

By the time she graduated from high school in May 2004, she also was student body president at Mat-Su College, and on track to earn her associate’s degree a year later.

“I’ve always been a gifted student,” CJ said.

They met when the student government and the math club co-sponsored a Valentine’s Day bake sale in 2004.

“He and I were sitting there all day together and I thought he was super sweet,” CJ said. “He caught my attention because he was buying flowers for his mother.”

The seeds of a friendship were planted that day, but romance and marriage weren’t on either of their minds, she said.

“My dad was actively campaigning for me to date Clayton,” CJ said.

She remembers the moment she realized her father might be right about “Got Fish,” her younger siblings’ nickname for Clayton.

Her family was driving to the Kenai Peninsula for a fishing trip in 2004, but CJ couldn’t go. Undeterred, her friend Clayton, 21, offered to drive down in his car with CJ’s siblings — Steve, 15, Melody, 13, Beth, 11, and Viv, 9.

“That was the first time I realized how close we’d gotten as friends — watching him drive away with the kids,” CJ said. “He didn’t look like someone who’d gotten the short end of the stick.”

Melody McIlroy remembers that day, the mixed CD of techno music, the special bag of snacks “Got Fish” packed for the trip, and his excitement at sharing this adventure with them, a carload of kids.

“‘I have this music you’ve never heard before,’” she said, remembering her brother-in-law’s words during happier times.

It’s impossible to reconcile her experience with Clayton over the years with the jury’s guilty verdict on murder charges, McIlroy said.

CJ and Clayton palled around for nine months before they began dating in November 2004, CJ said. Clayton popped the question at the top of the Ferris wheel at the Alaska State Fair in August 2005.

“When we told my dad, he looked like he was going to do a happy dance,” CJ said.

Christiane and Clayton were married 21 days later on Sept. 17, 2005, in a ceremony in front of family and friends at the Agate Inn in Wasilla.

It was December 2005 before the two moved in together though, because Clayton was taking classes at Mat-Su College and working out here, and CJ was taking classes at UAA and living in an apartment the two rented in town with her friend.

Jocelynn Renee Allison was born June 22, 2007, in time to tag along for her mom’s last semester of work on her bachelor’s in journalism and public communication with a minor in business administration.

CJ also recently earned her Master’s of Business Administration in October 2014 in management and strategy from Western Governor’s University.

Ehlers-Danlos

Jocelynn was not a “normal” baby. That’s why she’d been seen by medical professionals more than 40 times in her 15 months of life; her parents were desperate to identify what was wrong with their daughter.

CJ said they knew something was wrong when Jocelynn didn’t reach normal childhood milestones on time, like sitting up, crawling and standing. She had hypermobility and low muscle tone, increasing head circumference and unexplained weight loss. She said these symptoms were the reason the baby was assigned to a team of specialists, including a neurologist, dietitian and physical therapist.

It wasn’t until after Jocelynn’s death that doctors at the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Jocelynn’s mother, CJ, with a genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is passed from parent to child. Due to the genetic nature of the disease, it is likely that Jocelynn, her mother, aunts, uncle and grandfather all share this condition, CJ said.

Ehlers-Danlos is a group of inherited disorders that affect the connective tissues — primarily skin, joints and blood vessel walls. But there is no genetic test to prove causation. Instead, the diagnosis usually results when an individual's symptoms and medical/family history match the disease, and other forms of the disease with a genetic test available have been ruled out.

But neither Jocelynn’s hypermobility diagnosis nor the fact that Ehlers-Danlos runs in her family was considered by the medical examiner, or the consulting doctors — none of whom is board-certified in forensic pathology — who told law enforcement and prosecutors that only child abuse could have caused the baby’s fatal injuries, CJ said.

During the trial, the Allisons learned a brain bleed in Jocelynn’s head meant she was more fragile than they knew during the last weeks of her brief life.

Scientific uncertainty

As a scientific theory, shaken baby syndrome came to the fore in the 1960s. For decades a triad of symptoms — hemorrhaging in the eyes, subdural hematoma and a swollen brain — were viewed as ironclad medical evidence a child died of abuse.

But by 2006, medical experts around the world began questioning the symptoms as conclusive.

Child forensic pathology expert Dr. Janice Ophoven has testified in several trials Alaska where people stand accused of the shaking death of a child. She says the U.S. criminal justice system has been slow to recognize that the triad of conditions long associated with shaken baby cases also are present with a host of other physical conditions.

“This is one of the worst miscarriage of justice cases I’ve had, but it is not the only case like it in Alaska,” Ophoven said.

Overall, she said such cases are not based on a good understanding of neuroscience. She said the evidence is gathered by people who aren’t experts, corroborated by doctors who aren’t trained as pathologists, used in court by prosecutors who aren’t familiar with neuroscience, and presented in court as absolute proof to jurors who also lack the medical training to refute the claims.

Disagreement in the medical and scientific community in the U.S. and internationally is increasing regarding what’s now being referred to as “abusive head trauma,” Ophoven said.

“Instead of arguing the science they just changed the name,” she said by phone. “Courts have allowed junk science to prevail.”

Pediatricians are doing work that should be conducted by forensic pathologists who are trained to interpret injuries and render opinions that often make up the backbone for such cases, she said. It’s especially important because forensic pathology often is the primary evidence a crime has taken place, Ophoven said

In the case of Jocelynn’s death, Ophoven said the baby’s autopsy was not conducted by a board-certified forensic pathologist. And none of the three doctors who read the results and confirmed the child abuse finding for the state is a board-certified forensic pathologist, she said.

“Their findings carry enormous weight within the criminal justice system,” she said of doctors like Dr. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson of The Children’s Place in Wasilla.

Baldwin-Johnson testified during Allison’s five-week trial that when she sees no other medical explanation for the injuries, child abuse is the answer she turns to.

Ophoven said flawed autopsy findings and a lack of forensic pathology expertise involved prior to the decision to prosecute sets up a scenario where the risk of a miscarriage of justice is very high.

“Police are using bad ‘science’ to tell people their children were horribly murdered,” she said.

Damage is done

According to a review of shaken baby cases by Deborah Tuerkheimer, a DePaul University law professor and author of the just-published book, “Flawed Convictions: “Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Inertia of Injustice,” 95 percent of people charged in shaken baby deaths are convicted, and of those, 90 percent receive life sentences.

Clayton could be sentenced for as long as 20 to 99 years on Wednesday. The prosecution is asking for a 40-year sentence, 30 to serve and 10 years of probation, CJ said.

No matter what the judge decides, Clayton won’t be coming home on Wednesday.

No matter what the judge decides, in some ways, the Allison family has already received a life sentence.

Their daughter is dead. CJ’s health has deteriorated. She still struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder — not from the death of her daughter, but from the ensuing seven-year process of her husband’s investigation, trial and conviction. Her health and mental health won’t allow her to work right now.

"My current health, in combination with the need to support Clayton through this process, makes it impossible to work,” she said. “Clayton used to assist me with my physical challenges, and without his help, I cannot keep up the same lifestyle. I am living one day at a time right now financially, and the whole family has been publicly branded as supporting a child abuser.”

An appeal is planned, which is Clayton’s best hope of release, she said. But any possibility of freedom is years away, CJ said.

“Nobody thinks about how much damage is done when an accusation is made, and it’s not true,” she said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.