Waneta Hoyt Trial: 1995

During the opening arguments at Hoyt's trial, the prosecution revealed her confession about the murders. The defense countered that Hoyt's statements had been made under duress, and she had since recanted her confession. As the trial progressed, the prosecutors introduced testimony from nurses who had worked with the Hoyt children and had had suspicions about their deaths. Another prosecution witness was Dr. Michael M. Braden, a forensic pathologist who had examined the bodies of the children after they were exhumed prior to the trial. According to Braden, all five children were deliberately suffocated. He said, "There are no natural conditions, including sudden infant death, that can explain the deaths."

The main witness for the defense was the renowned SIDS expert himself, Dr. Steinschneider. By now he was president of the American SIDS Institute in Atlanta. Steinschneider testified that the deaths of the two Hoyt children he had reviewed were consistent with SIDS. But under cross-examination, he stated that he did not know how thoroughly the police had searched for evidence of foul play. "For all I know," Steinschneider admitted, "they could have been suffocated."

Steinschneider's theory of SIDS had been under close scrutiny since Hoyt's arrest in 1994. Some doctors, such as Dr. Linda Norton, believed the sleep-apnea theory diverted attention away from parents who had killed their children and then claimed SIDS was to blame. Some medical examiners and prosecutors believed that as many as 20 percent of the approximately 7,500 SIDS deaths reported annually resulted from other causes—including murder. Cases similar to Hoyt's had been reported before and at the time of her trial. But many legal and medical officials also stressed that children did indeed die of SIDS, and most parents of dead infants were not killers.

In the end, the jury believed Hoyt's original confession and the other evidence against her were sufficient proof to find Hoyt guilty of murdering all five children. Judge Vincent Sgueglia sentenced her to 15 years for each murder. Already ill at the time of her trial, Hoyt served just 3 of her 75-year sentence, dying of pancreatic cancer in September 1998. Her trial and conviction revealed the necessity for legal and medical officials to look beyond SIDS when faced with the seemingly inexplicable death of a child.