Mother cleared of murder after 13 years in jail
A woman who spent 13 years in prison after she was convicted of strangling her 13-year-old daughter has been exonerated by forensic evidence showing the girl died of a cocaine overdose.
Lynn DeJac, now 44, was released from prison in New York state and her second-degree murder conviction for the death of her daughter Crystallynn Girard overturned in November after newly analysed DNA evidence.
Prosecutors had been planning to retry her this spring, saying the DNA found in her daughter’s body and bed did nothing to refute the circumstantial evidence that led a jury to convict Ms DeJac of killing the girl after a night of heavy drinking.
It was in reviewing evidence for the upcoming trial that the prosecution’s forensics experts made the stunning find that the girl died of “acute cocaine intoxication” and was not killed, Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark said.
Cocaine was found in the girl’s system at the time of her death, he said, but it was ignored at trial because prosecution and defence lawyers thought the amount too small to be relevant.
All charges against Ms DeJac will be dismissed, Mr Clark said.
Dr Michael Baden, a state police forensics expert called by Mr Clark in December, said that the first medical examiner may have misinterpreted a mark on the girl’s neck made by her chin as a thumbprint, and that frothing from her mouth and nose – a strong indicator of a drug overdose – may have been wiped away by the time the post mortem was done.
Ms DeJac said she was trying to put her life back together, including spending time with her teenage twin sons, who were born soon after she went to prison.
