ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Whitehall Township man convicted of murdering his infant daughter in 2013 will be released from prison more than a decade early under a new deal struck Monday due to questions about the medical expert whose testimony led to his conviction.
Michael Wolfe, 40, was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in state prison in 2017 for fatally shaking his 2-month-old daughter Quinn.
The case hinged on the expert testimony of Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, then the director of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s Child Advocacy Center, who was the only doctor who pinpointed when the assault took place.
But recent lawsuits and investigations have questioned Esernio-Jenssen's credibility.
Critics allege she had a history of incorrect diagnoses of child abuse before arriving in the Lehigh Valley, and the region's rate of child abuse findings climbed abnormally high on her watch.
With no other expert capable of narrowing down the time of Quinn's assault, Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan said Monday that his office could not sit back and leave Wolfe in state prison. Given how their star witness has lost all credibility, he said, he had no confidence they would win an appeal of Wolfe's case, either.
"This case has little to do with an exoneration. We have no reason to believe he is innocent, but we also have no evidence that he was the murderer."Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan
New plea and sentencing
Under a new sentencing agreed upon Monday, Wolfe pleaded no contest to charges of third-degree murder and endangerment of a child.
He will be released later this year upon completing a nine-year sentence. Wolfe must then complete two years of probation and have no contact with minors.
"This case has little to do with an exoneration. We have no reason to believe he is innocent, but we also have no evidence that he was the murderer," Holihan told Judge James Anthony in Lehigh County Court on Monday.
Under the terms of the deal, Wolfe is waiving his rights to appeal his sentence and giving up his rights to sue the county for prosecutorial misconduct. Those waivers don't apply to potential litigation against other parties, Holihan said.
Few people appeared happy with how the case was settled.
Quinn's mother Cristen Sanchez, and Sanchez's sister Courtney Snow, carried a pink frame of Quinn's baby pictures to Anthony's bench, where they told the judge this wasn't justice for the infant girl. Snow insisted that children would be in danger with Wolfe's release.
Sanchez said that she struggles to function on Quinn's birthday and the anniversary of her time at the hospital. She would have turned 12 late last month.
"I respect it. I don't agree with it," Sanchez said of Holihan's decision to negotiate a new deal. "Even though she (Esernio-Jenssen) was discredited, she was right in this case."
Their words appeared to resonate with Anthony, who said that if Wolfe was a real man, he would need to take responsibility for killing his child.
Defense counsel Craig Cooley interrupted the judge, telling him his client would do no such thing. A no contest plea does not acknowledge guilt — just that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him.
"He still claims he did not do this. We can all agree he didn't get a fair trial," Cooley said.
Anthony agreed, adding that he understood Holihan's decision.
"I wish I could do more so that I could give the mother peace," Anthony said after fumbling for words.
Wolfe himself did not make any comments other than to answer basic questions from the judge. On the other side of the courtroom, his family fumed. They had thought Wolfe would be released from prison Monday, only for Holihan to insist on a full nine-year sentence that morning.
"When does Matt get to tell his side of the story?" grumbled Bob Wolfe, the defendant's father.
A flawed process
Investigators struggled for two years to make headway in the death of Quinn Wolfe.
On Nov. 12, 2013, Michael Wolfe rushed the baby to St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill, where Sanchez was on duty working as a nurse. He had finished a shower at home when he noticed the baby had vomited and was unusually lethargic. Something was wrong with Quinn's eyes as well, he told investigators.
Staff at St. Luke's realized Quinn was in serious distress, court records show. Before the day was over, doctors identified symptoms in line with shaken baby syndrome, including broken ribs, a fractured skill and brain damage. Some of the injuries appeared to be several days or weeks old, according to court records. Quinn was flown to St. Christopher's Hospital in Philadelphia, where she was taken off life support six days later.
Most of the doctors at St. Luke's and St. Christopher's who treated Quinn told authorities that her fatal injuries occurred sometime between 30 hours to five days before Wolfe took her to the hospital. Multiple people, including Wolfe and Sanchez, cared for her in that time frame, leaving police with few leads and several suspects.
That changed in 2016 when Esernio-Jenssen reviewed the case and determined she could narrow the time of the assault. She testified the attack occurred three hours before Quinn arrived at St. Luke's, leaving Michael Wolfe as the only suspect.
Her testimony went virtually unchecked at Wolfe's trial. Defense witness William Manion, a forensic pathologist, prepared a report to counter the brief document outlining Esernio-Jenssen's findings. But Manion never appeared, and Esernio-Jenssen's testimony expanded far behind the paragraph of findings prosecutors provided to the defense before the trial.
Judge Kelly Banach, who presided over the trial but has since retired, denied the defense a continuance so Manion could appear. When the defense then called for a mistrial, she allowed that Manion's report be read to the jury. Cooley and Holihan said that failed to address much of her testimony that the defense could not have anticipated.
Cooley said that cases like this often amount to a battle of experts. When the defense had to make due without an expert who could speak to the jury, it was like walking into war unarmed.
Key controller's report
Wolfe was still sorting through his appeals process when Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley released an audit reviewing local medical child abuse cases in August 2023. His office noted that the Lehigh Valley had an abnormally high number of medical child abuse diagnoses in the region compared to the rest of Pennsylvania. He called for a more detailed investigation into Esernio-Jenssen and Lehigh Valley Health Network.
Since then, dozens of families have sued Jenssen and LVHN. Those cases remain ongoing in court, though Lehigh and Northampton counties have been dismissed as defendants. Esernio-Jenssen, who previously had her credibility questioned in New York and Florida, resigned from LVHN in March 2024.
Pinsley watched the proceedings in court Monday and spoke with Wolfe's family throughout the day. The family had approached him following his report and urged him to review the case, he said. After seeing Esernio-Jenssen's critical role in the trial, he said he brought his concerns to Holihan.
"I don't know who's innocent or guilty. It could have been the mom, it could have been the dad, it could have been anybody. I felt like my job when I saw the case was to help him get a new trial," Pinsley said.
The fallout of that report amounted to a "public defenestration" of Esernio-Jenssen, Holihan said. When he took office last year, he ordered his office to review all cases where she had served as an expert witness. After a thorough review, Wolfe's case was the only one where they felt a defendant didn't get a fair trial, he said.
"I give Gavin all the credit in the world. He didn't have to do any of this," Cooley said, adding the district attorney would undoubtedly take political heat for his decision.
"We're just trying to do the right thing," Holihan said.
