Medical examiner rules Aisling Brady McCarthy baby-shaking case was not homicide

Charges have been dropped against Aisling Brady McCarthy, the Irish nanny accused of murdering an infant in her care in the US.

Medical examiner rules Aisling Brady McCarthy baby-shaking case was not homicide

By Catherine Shanahan

Charges have been dropped against Aisling Brady McCarthy, the Irish nanny accused of murdering an infant in her care in the US.

The Boston Herald reported tonight that the state had dropped charges against the 37-year-old from Lavey, Co Cavan, after the medical examiner’s office reversed its previous position and concluded that the death was not a homicide caused by shaken baby syndrome.

“Based on an assessment of the present state of the evidence, including the amended ruling from the Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy, the Commonwealth cannot meet its burden of proof,” said Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan.

The announcement by prosecutors came just hours after news that the medical examiner had changed its conclusion in the death on January 18, 2013 of one-year-old Rehma Sabir of Cambridge, saying it was not a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head.

The medical examiner said in his ruling that the child’s medical history “could have made her prone to easy bleeding with relatively minor trauma.”

“I believe that enough evidence has been presented to raise the possibility that the bleeding could have been related to an accidental injury in a child with a bleeding risk or possibly could have even been a result of an undefined natural disease,” he said.

The ruling could end the case against Ms Brady McCarthy, who, after two-and-a-half years in jail, was released last May on $15,000 bail and placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet attached to her ankle.

Tonight, her defence attorney Melinda Thompson said she would file a motion to dismiss on Monday, seeking the end of the first-degree murder case against McCarthy, whom Thompson has repeatedly insisted was wrongly accused of committing a horrific crime.

“Miss McCarthy was put in jail for two and a half years over a crime that never occurred,’’ Thompson said.

McCarthy was arrested in January 2013, five days after Sabir was pronounced dead at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she was rushed after Brady found the infant unresponsive in the child’s Cambridge home.

McCarthy, an Irish immigrant living illegally in the United States since 2002, was ordered held without bail until last May.

According to Thompson, the state medical examiner’s office originally concluded the child’s death was a homicide and that the cause of death was “blunt force trauma.’’

A finding that was influenced by grand jury testimony by Dr Alice Newton, a former Boston Children’s Hospital child protection expert who concluded the child’s death was an example of shaken baby syndrome.

But prodded by defence medical experts, the medical examiner’s office reopened its inquiry, and after spending the past several months reviewing forensic information, concluded this month that the infant’s death could no longer be considered a homicide, Thompson said.

Thompson added the new conclusion is that the cause of death was a “subdural haemorrhage with an unknown etiology.’’

Ryan’s office has alleged that the child was in McCarthy’s exclusive care when the girl suffered massive brain injuries consistent with violent shaking, including extensive bleeding in her brain and the backs of her eyes.

Specialists said she was subjected to violent force and that the injuries could not have been inflicted before that day.

But defence medical experts noted that the child sustained bone and compression fractures several weeks before her death, when she was traveling abroad with her family without McCarthy. They also say the child was sick much of her life and suffered from a bleeding disorder and gastrointestinal problems.

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