Louise Woodward

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Louise Woodward (born 28 February 1978, Elton, Cheshire, England) is a British former au pair convicted, at the age of 19, of the involuntary manslaughter of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen in his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

Contents 1 Background 2 The trial 3 The appeal 4 Polygraph testing 5 Events after the end of criminal proceedings 6 External sources 7 External links

[edit] Background

Matthew Eappen died on February 9, 1997, in Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, from a fractured skull and subdural hematoma, five days after being admitted to hospital and falling into a coma. The boy, eight months old, was also found to have a fractured wrist, an unnoticed and unexplained injury from a month earlier. Dr Lois Smith, an ophthalmologist, observed retinal hemorrhages judged characteristic of shaken baby syndrome.

In a statement to the police Woodward claimed she said that she "popped the baby on the bed." There was a dispute in her case over the use of the word "popped." In British English, this phrase means "put" or "placed" and Woodward claimed she was trying to say she "placed the baby on the bed". In American English the term 'popped' suggests violence. Her defence lawyers argued to the jury that the word "popped" does not have the same meaning in American English. However, in addition to "popping" Matthew on the bed, Woodward also told the police that she had dropped him on the floor at one point, and that she had been "a little rough" with him. The police officer who interviewed her immediately after the incident adamantly insists that she never used the word "popped", but in fact said that she "dropped" the baby on the bed.

Media coverage of the case was intense. Before the trial, the defence attempted to move the trial to another city, arguing that a local jury would be too biased to render a fair verdict. The judge disagreed and denied the defence motion.

[edit] The trial

The evidence presented in the televised trial was as follows. The presiding judge was Hiller B. Zobel. The prosecution, led by Martha Coakley, presented eight physicians involved in Matthew Eappen's care, including a neurosurgeon, an ophthalmologist, a radiologist, two pathologists and an expert in child abuse, who testified to their belief that his injuries had occurred as a result of violent shaking and from his head impacting with a hard surface. The defence challenged this, among other things, on the grounds that there were no neck injuries to Matthew Eappen - injuries that would have been expected if he had been violently shaken. The prosecution had also claimed initially that Matthew Eappen's impact injuries were the equivalent of having been thrown from a two story building. But they equivocated over this claim as the trial progressed. The defense presented expert medical testimony that the infant's injury may have occurred three weeks before the date of death, implying that the parents, Sunil Eappen and Deborah Eappen, were as fully implicated by circumstances as Ms. Woodward. There were old wrist injuries to the infant that may have been incurred before Woodward even arrived at the house. Woodward, however, admitted under cross-examination on the stand that she never noticed any slight bumps, marks or any unusual behavior by the baby at any time prior to the night he was taken to hospital.

Woodward had used a fake ID to visit a nightclub because she was under 21. This was used as evidence in court against her character, implying that she was not somebody to be trusted. In the United Kingdom the legal age to purchase alcohol (or visit nightclubs) is 18 years of age; however, this is of doubtful relevance since the point of this evidence was to impeach her credibility by showing that she lied about her age, rather than by showing that she was an underage drinker.

In addition, the prosecution presented evidence that Woodward had been an irresponsible nanny to the Eappens' children. She sometimes stayed up late to attend parties with friends, so that she had trouble getting up the next morning to get the children ready for breakfast and school. Only days before the baby was admitted to hospital, the baby's parents told Woodward that she was on the verge of being fired if she did not correct her behavior. Despite this, Woodward claimed to the jury that she was not upset at the parents around the time the alleged injury occurred.

The prosecution also presented evidence of a witness, Kathleen Sorabella, who testified that she was once standing next to Woodward waiting in line to see the musical Rent. Woodward allegedly told Sorabella that she disliked her job as a nanny, that the baby's parents controlled what time she came home at night, and that their children were spoiled. Woodward's own best friend in Boston and a fellow English au pair, Ruhana Augustin, also testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling the jury that Woodward had complained to her about the Eappens' curfew and that she was annoyed by how much the baby cried. On the day of the alleged shaking, Augustin said that Woodward had admitted to "gently shaking" the baby.

The architect of Louise Woodward's medical and forensic defense was Barry Scheck, co founder of The Innocence Project. Woodward was also defended by local counsel, Harvey Silverglate and Andrew Good of the Boston law firm of Silverglate & Good.

As part of the defense strategy, Woodward's attorneys requested that the jury not be given the option of convicting her of manslaughter (what the law calls a lesser included offense), and instead either convict her of murder or find her not guilty.

On October 30, 1997, after 26 hours of deliberations, the jury found her guilty of second degree murder. She faced a sentence of a minimum of 15 years to life in prison under as Massachusetts' law.

The conviction had a side effect of killing legislation in Massachusetts to restore capital punishment.[1]

[edit] The appeal

Woodward's legal team filed post-conviction motions to the trial court, and the hearing opened on November 4. In the days following the verdict it emerged that the jury had been split about the murder charge, but those who had favoured an acquittal were persuaded to accept a conviction. This fact was of no legal consequence, however. None of the jury "thought she tried to murder him," one member said.

On November 10, at a post-conviction relief hearing, Judge Hiller B. Zobel reduced the conviction to involuntary manslaughter, stating that "the circumstances in which the defendant acted were characterised by confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice in the legal sense supporting a conviction for second-degree murder", and adding: "I am morally certain that allowing this defendant on this evidence to remain convicted of second-degree murder would be a miscarriage of justice".^[1][2]

Judge Zobel's decision to release his findings simultaneously online and in print was widely misinterpreted as an Internet first. He made history for the wrong reason when a power outage delayed the e-mailing of his judgment to the media.

Woodward's sentence was reduced to time served (279 days) and she was freed. Assistant District Attorney Gerald Leone then appealed the judge's decision to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Woodward's lawyers also asked the court to throw out her manslaughter conviction. The court affirmed the guilty verdict and the reduction in conviction to involuntary manslaughter by a 7-0 vote. In a close, 4-3 split decision the court rejected the prosecution's appeal against the reduction of the conviction to involuntary manslaughter, and the sentence June 16, 1998. Woodward then returned to Great Britain.

[edit] Polygraph testing

Before the trial on May 7, 1997, Woodward decided to undergo a polygraph examination conducted by Dr David C. Raskin, a polygraph examiner hired by her own lawyers. During the course of this examination Woodward was asked relevant questions about whether she caused injury to Matthew Eappen while he was in her care on February 4, 1997. Woodward denied having caused any injuries to Matthew Eappen, and Dr Raskin concluded that her answers to these questions were truthful to a confidence level of 95 percent. Dr Raskin's results were evaluated by Dr Charles Honts, another polygrapher hired by Woodward's defence lawyers, who also claimed that Woodward had answered truthfully when responding to relevant questions about whether she had injured Matthew.

[edit] Events after the end of criminal proceedings

On returning home Woodward gave a press conference, which was broadcast live in Britain and in Boston. She said that she would be giving an interview to the BBC for no money and wanted to return to her life. The interview was conducted by Martin Bashir in a special edition of the flagship BBC show, Panorama. She maintained her innocence in the interview.

Meanwhile in the USA, the parents of the late Matthew Eappen filed a civil lawsuit to prevent Woodward from earning any profits from selling her story. Woodward was unable to defend the lawsuit as her legal costs were no longer covered by the nanny agency.

In 1998, the British newspaper the Daily Mail stated that it had paid Woodward's parents for an exclusive interview with them.

Louise Woodward studied law at London South Bank University, where she graduated with a 2:2 class degree in July 2002. In 2004 she began a training contract (the two-year training at an accredited firm that aspiring solicitors must serve) with the law firm Ainley North Halliwell, in Oldham, Lancashire. However, she dropped out of her training contract the following year in order to pursue a career as a ballroom and Latin dance teacher in Chester with her former boyfriend, Richard Colley.^[3]

In 2007, Dr Patrick Barnes, the prosecution's star medical witness, reversed his opinion: he concluded that death could have been caused by an old injury, as argued by the defence. In a scientific paper he states: "The science we have today could, in fact, have exonerated Louise. There is certainly, in retrospect, reasonable doubt." ^[4]

Also in 2007, the British press reacted with incredulity at news of Woodward being named the "most notorious criminal convicted in Massachusetts" by Boston law magazine Exhibit A.^[5]

[edit] External sources

[edit] External links

• "Statement by Louise"
• Court TV: Massachusetts v. Woodward, The Nanny Murder Trial
• Louise quits law for dancing