For two decades, Danyel Smith has been adamant that he did not cause the death of his 2-month-old son Chandler in 2002.
On Tuesday, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Gallant vacated his felony murder and aggravated battery convictions and granted his motion for a new trial.
According to trial records, on April 29, 2002, Smith and his son were driving to meet Chandler’s mother, Marsha Brandon, when Smith noticed the baby had stopped breathing. Smith stopped to attempt CPR before driving to meet Brandon, who had called 911. Paramedics rushed Chandler to the hospital where doctors began to suspect abuse.
Two days later, Smith was arrested at the hospital. On May 6, Chandler was taken off life support and died.
Despite Brandon telling investigators that Smith took good care of Chandler and referring to him as “Mr. Mom,” he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison based on a medical examiner’s diagnosis that his son sustained abusive head trauma, commonly known at the time as shaken baby syndrome.
Smith, now 51 years old, has always denied abusing Chandler.
“I did not beat my son,” he testified in 2003.
At a March hearing on the motion for a new trial, his attorneys, Mark Loudon-Brown and Paulina Lucio Maymon from the Southern Center for Human Rights, presented testimony from eight doctors who practice across different specialties. Smith’s legal team argued that based on recent advancements in how shaken baby syndrome is now identified, doctors would conclude Chandler died of natural causes.
In 2008, Audrey Edmunds became the first parent to be exonerated based on a new scientific understanding of SBS. Since then, dozens of other parents and infant caregivers have also had their convictions overturned.
The Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office argued that Smith’s new evidence did not meet the six requirements for a new trial, called the Timberlake standard. Prosecutors countered the witnesses for the defense with testimony from two doctors who endorsed the original SBS diagnosis and from Brandon.
“He gets to live his life, but my baby doesn’t have a life,” Brandon said after the hearing in March. “He’s a murderer and he’s where he needs to be. He needs to stay there.”
After the March hearing, Loudon-Brown told reporters he was hopeful for a positive outcome for his client because the judge seemed to have researched the background of the case and came prepared with questions for both sides.
“We had to demonstrate that there’s new evidence, that we diligently presented it, and that it’s material,” Loudon-Brown said. “That there’s a reasonable probability that a reasonable juror would have a reasonable doubt today.”
On Wednesday, he filed a motion for Smith to be released on bail pending a new trial. The Gwinnett County DA’s office declined to comment.
The first hearing for the new trial is scheduled for Sept. 1. For Smith, his attorneys, and his family, this moment has been years in the making.
Smith’s first motion for a new trial in 2007 was denied, but when Loudon-Brown began representing him in 2021, they filed an extraordinary motion for a new trial, a last resort option that can be used only once.
As the motion was working its way through the system, the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office approached Smith with a new deal: Plead guilty to manslaughter and his sentence would be reduced to time served.
Smith, who has spent more than 20 years behind bars asserting his innocence, refused the deal.
“We knew that by them even offering a plea deal, that we were that much closer to freedom,” Smith’s fianceé, Latasha Pyatt, told Capital B Atlanta.
A year later in 2024, his motion for a new trial was denied by Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor, who also presided over his original trial.
In many cases, that would have been the end, but Smith’s attorneys appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court and presented their argument in April 2025.
The state Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the order denying him a new trial was announced in October. The justices decided to send the case back to Gwinnett courts, where it was assigned to Gallant since Batchelor is now retired.
After the October verdict, Pyatt told Capital B Atlanta she began feeling optimistic about Smith coming home, but knew it was hard for her fianceé to feel the same. Smith was hoping the justices would vacate his conviction without sending it back to the lower court.
“He was looking forward to possibly being home for Thanksgiving,” Pyatt said in October. “I jokingly told him last night that we have five white balls, but we just didn’t get the Mega Ball this time. But it’s coming, it’s coming.”
Read More:
