Patricia Stallings

rdf:langString Patricia Stallings

rdf:langString Patricia "Patty" Stallings (born 1964 or 1965) is an American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murder after the death of her son Ryan on September 7, 1989. Because testing seemed to indicate an elevated level of ethylene glycol in Ryan's blood, authorities suspected antifreeze poisoning and they arrested Patricia Stallings the next day. She was convicted of murder in early 1991 and sentenced to life in prison. Stallings gave birth to another child while incarcerated awaiting trial; he was diagnosed with methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), a rare genetic disorder that can mimic antifreeze poisoning. Prosecutors initially did not believe that the sibling's diagnosis had anything to do with Ryan's case and Stallings’ own lawyer failed to produce available evidence as proof of the possibility. After a professor in biochemistry and molecular biology had some of Ryan’s blood samples tested, he was able to prove that the child had also died from MMA and not ethylene glycol poisoning. Test samples were sent to several commercial labs that used the same method as used on Ryan’s sample. Nearly half of the test results were incorrect. After spending nearly two years incarcerated, Stallings was released in July 1991. Prosecutors decided to close the case two months later. Stallings sued the hospital and laboratories that were involved in Ryan's care and reached an out-of-court settlement.