# How about the Louise Woodward case...



## h.ishmael (May 2, 2011)

I can't beleive this hasn't been brought up....

*Background*

*Five days after being admitted to **Children's Hospital** in *



*, Matthew Eappen fell into a *



*. He was also found to have a fractured wrist, an unnoticed and unexplained injury from a month earlier. Dr. Lois E.H. Smith, M.D., Ph.D., an ophthalmologist at the hospital, observed *



* judged characteristic of *



*.*
*In a statement to the police, Woodward said that she "popped the baby on the bed". There was a dispute in her case over the use of the word popped: in *



*, this phrase means "put" or "placed", and Woodward claimed she was saying that she "placed the baby on the bed". However, in American English, popped suggests violence. Her defense lawyers argued to the jury that the word popped does not have the same meaning as in *



*. 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, nowhere more so than in Britain. Before the trial, the defense tried 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 defense motion.*
*Trial*

The presiding judge was Hiller B. Zobel. The prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Gerald Leone, presented eight physicians involved in Matthew Eappen's care, including a 



, an 



, a 



, two 



 and an expert in 



, 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 defense challenged this, among other things, on the grounds that there were no neck injuries to Matthew Eappen- injuries that they claimed 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 and Deborah Eappen, might be implicated in negligence or abuse of the child. There were old wrist injuries to the infant that may have been incurred before Woodward even arrived at the house. Woodward, however, claimed under cross-examination 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.
The lead counsel at Woodward's trial, and the architect of her medical and forensic defense, was 



, co-founder of the 



. Scheck was hired and paid for by Woodward's employer 



's Cultural Care Au Pair. 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. Legal experts speculated that the motivation for this strategy was to help EF Education First avoid a civil lawsuit from the Eappens. EF's screening process and training for au pairs had come under scrutiny; Woodward had only received three days of training. If the death had been pre-meditated then under Massachusetts law EF Education First could not be held responsible. However, if the death was not pre-meditated then it would indicate fault with EF Education First's Cultural Care Au Pair.[1]
On 30 October 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 Massachusetts' law.
The conviction had a side effect on killing legislation in Massachusetts to restore 



.[2]
*Appeal*

Woodward's legal team filed post-conviction motions to the trial court, and the hearing opened on 4 November. 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 10 November, at a post-conviction relief hearing, Judge Hiller B. Zobel reduced the conviction to 



, 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," 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".[3][4]
Woodward's sentence was reduced to 



 (279 days) and she was freed. Assistant 



 Gerald Leone then appealed the judge's decision to the 



. 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 16 June 1998. Woodward then returned to the 



.
*Polygraph testing*

Before the trial on 7 May 1997, Woodward decided to undergo a 



 in a special edition of the flagship 



. Woodward lost the lawsuit as her legal costs were no longer covered by the nanny agency.
In 1998, the British newspaper the _



, where she graduated with a 2:2 (Hons) 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 



 of her training contract the following year in order to pursue a career as a 



 and 



 teacher in Chester.[5][6]
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.[7]_


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## 263FPD (Oct 29, 2004)

Ummmm? What????


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## Sam1974 (Apr 8, 2009)

wtf?


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## 263FPD (Oct 29, 2004)




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## cc3915 (Mar 26, 2004)

h.ishmael said:


> I can't beleive this hasn't been brought up....


Why? This case was adjudicated before this website was created. Are you just trollin'?


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## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

*Another Lawyer !!!!!!!*


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## Rock (Mar 20, 2005)

Is this the guy from Moby Dick?


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