It was precisely the type of case that a prosecutor hoping to secure more convictions for capital punishment seeks out: In 2022, 11-week-old Sawyer Clarke was admitted to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh with a brain hemorrhage causing bleeding behind both eyes and fractures in both legs. He passed away a day later. Jordan Clarke, Sawyer’s father, who had been watching over him at the time, maintained that Sawyer had not intentionally injured his son but had instead slipped on a plastic grocery bag while holding him and fallen on top of him. Apparently, his explanation was not taken seriously by anyone in a position of authority. Clarke was quickly taken into custody and accused of killing someone. He is still being held by the police while he awaits trial and the possibility of being executed.
However, it appears that Jason Walsh, the district attorney for Washington County, Pennsylvania, was not as sure about the case’s nature as his hasty decision to seek the death penalty would imply. Walsh allegedly told Timothy Warco, his county’s coroner, “You know that I need this to be a homicide,” according to a petition submitted this week to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which claims that Walsh purposefully falsified the child’s death certificate. To win an election, I need it.
According to Warco, Walsh then coerced him into presenting a certificate that stated that the death was a “homicide, with shaken baby syndrome/abusive trauma as the mechanism.” The petition includes a copy of this purportedly forged death certificate. (Walsh calls the accusations “false and without merit,” disputing Warco’s account.)
Since society disapproves of child murders, the death penalty may seem particularly appealing to voters in that situation. Therefore, a shrewd prosecutor might conclude that punishing child killers severely would improve their chances of winning reelection. Walsh may have stated as much in private, according to an affidavit signed by Warco.
If Walsh did what the petition claims, it is not only a startling instance of prosecutorial misconduct but also evidence of a long-standing argument made by opponents of the death penalty: prosecutors actually use the punishment, which is only reserved for the worst of the worst, for political gain, even when guilt is not entirely clear.
On behalf of Jordan Clarke and another defendant, the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a nonprofit organization unrelated to this magazine, filed the petition. Since he was appointed DA in 2021, Walsh has pursued the death penalty with lust: “His office has sought a death sentence in 11 out of 18 homicides, a shocking percentage (61%) far outside the mainstream of Pennsylvania capital prosecutions.” (Walsh rejected the petition, calling it “an attempt by a liberal anti-death penalty group in Philadelphia to launch a liberal smear campaign against a Republican and throw a liberal Hail Mary.”)
What Warco claims transpired following the baby’s death is detailed in his affidavit. The autopsy was conducted by the long-serving medical examiner in Allegheny County, the county where the hospital is situated; however, Warco attests that Walsh plotted to transfer the autopsy’s jurisdiction to his own county. He presumably took this action because he didn’t think Karl Williams, the chief medical examiner for Allegheny County at the time, would declare the death a homicide and because he thought he would have more influence over Warco, his local coroner, who did, in fact, follow his instructions. (Walsh refutes these claims as well: “They are made by a person, and I have a documented record in the legal system of contesting his capacity to carry out his duties as coroner. In an affidavit, he confesses to lying and committing fraud.” “This Office will protect children and seek justice for children when they are victims of heinous crimes,” he continued.)
Warco’s office performed the autopsy, and while they were unable to ascertain the manner of death, they concluded that “blunt force trauma to the head” was the cause of death. Williams’s office received those findings and concluded that the cause of death “could not be determined.” Warco claims that Walsh, who was not pleased with the outcome, coerced him into submitting a second death certificate, this one with shaken-baby syndrome listed as the mechanism and homicide as the manner of death.
Williams confirmed to me that he would never have provided Walsh with the certificate he wanted. According to Williams, “the most pernicious dogma, especially in pediatrics, is that you can grab a baby and shake them to death.” “The ability to shake a baby to death has no scientific basis,” he stated. “There is no science to it.” Bleeding near the brain and in the tissue behind the eye are the most common criteria used to determine that a child died of shaken-baby syndrome. However, a wide range of trauma types can cause those injuries. According to Williams, he has been opposing the idea of shaken-baby syndrome for over 20 years. In at least one possible shaken-baby case, he declared the cause of death to be “undetermined” rather than homicide.
Despite the fact that shaken-baby syndrome has been the subject of legal and scientific scrutiny, Williams said it is “horrible, it’s frightening, it’s scary” that coroners still diagnose it and that prosecutors continue to use it as the basis for cases. Additionally, it might result in the death of an innocent person.
Walsh’s purported scheme to circumvent that “undetermined” decision ultimately fell through. Despite Walsh’s efforts to persuade the court otherwise, Pennsylvania state officials denied Warco’s death certificate, concluding that he lacked jurisdiction in the case. However, unless the Pennsylvania Supreme Court steps in, Jordan Clarke could still be executed if found guilty of homicide and aggravating circumstances like “torture.” The petition requested that it do just that, as well as limit Walsh’s future ability to seek the death penalty. It could be interpreted as obstruction of justice if he did what the coroner claims he did, and it raises the troubling prospect that more of Walsh’s cases might be similarly tainted.
This tale also offers insight into the workings of the death penalty apparatus. The petition reminds readers that prosecutors have “considerable discretion to seek the death penalty” and that they “may abuse that discretion in a corrupt, illegal, unconstitutional, and self-aggrandizing way.” This case challenges the assumption that the death penalty is applied equitably, at the very least. It’s hard to predict how many Jordan Clarkes or Jason Walshes are currently facing death or prosecuting cases in America.
