Lawyers for the British nanny, Ms Louise Woodward, convicted over the death of an infant in her care, yesterday called for a review of new evidence they believe could exonerate her.
"If it stands up to further inquiry," the attorneys said in a statement, the evidence "would confirm our prediction that independent scientific investigation into Matthew Eappen's death would eventually undermine the unjust conviction of Louise Woodward."
In the statement, Ms Woodward's lawyers, Mr Harvey Silvergate, Mr Andrew Good and Mr Barry Scheck, said the new evidence should be tested and verified. "Truth, though belatedly discovered, is still truth," they said, calling on prosecutors to co-operate in a new investigation.
Ms Woodward, who was working as an au pair for the parents of Matthew Eappen, was found guilty of manslaughter after the eight-month-old boy died in 1997. The autopsy at the time concluded that he died of shaken-impact syndrome.
Medical experts told CBS television Ms Woodward's conviction was unsafe because the infant could have died from strangulation rather than being shaken or hit on the head as prosecutors had alleged.
Citing the testimony of two doctors the programme commissioned to reviewed the baby's medical records, the program also suggested that Matthew Eappen could have been "serially abused".
Mr Floyd Giles and Mr Marvin Nelson, child-abuse specialists at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, who studied Matthew's medical records, scans and X-rays, agreed that the baby died as a result of a cause other than the shaking and blunt impact to the head evidence offered by the prosecution.
Ms Martha Coakley, who prosecuted the case against Ms Woodward, dismissed the new theory as "outrageous". She said the theory "cannot explain Eappen's skull fracture, severe retinal bleeding and extensive brain damage".
But Mr Scheck insisted the testimony could form the basis for a new trial. "We will go back to court if your experts will just say in sworn affidavits what they have said on television," he said.