Prosecutors appeal judge's decision for new trial in shaken baby case By Jeff Starck • Wausau Daily Herald • September 30, 2009  Prosecutors are appealing a judge's decision last month to grant an Athens man a new trial in connection with a 2005 shaken baby death. In a written ruling released in August, Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Howard vacated Quentin Louis' conviction on a first-degree reckless homicide charge and ordered that a new trial be scheduled. Louis, 28, of Athens was convicted in 2006 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on accusations that he shook his 4-month-old daughter, Madelyn, to death. Legal and scientific challenges to shaken-baby deaths since then resulted in Louis' request for a new trial. A former Madison-area day care provider served 10 years in prison before being freed in February 2008 after an appeals court ruled that new research might prove the suspect did not shake the baby to death. Marathon County Assistant District Attorney LaMont Jacobson said the Wisconsin Attorney General's Office agreed last week to appeal Howard's decision in a regional appeals court. The attorney general handles appeals to higher courts for local prosecutors, Jacobson said. The appeal delays a new trial indefinitely. Louis, who was transferred from a state prison to the Marathon County Jail in anticipation of a new trial, is being held there on a $200,000 cash bond. Louis was home alone with Madelyn when she became limp and stopped breathing, according to police. She was taken to the hospital and died three days later on March 21, 2005. An autopsy revealed that Madelyn had injuries consistent with shaken-baby syndrome and prosecutors told jurors that Louis must have shaken her and caused her death. Louis also confessed to police, but his trial attorney, Peter Rotter, argued that police extracted a false confession from a 23-year-old man with an eighth-grade education who was grieving and sleep-deprived in the days before his interrogation. In his written ruling, Howard said he granted the new trial "in the interest of justice," stating that jurors did not hear enough debate about shaken-baby syndrome or other possible causes of death.

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