To the chagrin of prosecutors and the cheers of her supporters on both sides of the Atlantic, British au pair Louise Woodward walked out of court a free woman on Monday after a judge reduced her murder conviction to manslaughter in the death of the young child left in her care.
“It’s time to bring the judicial part of this extraordinary case to a compassionate conclusion,” said Middlesex Superior Court Judge Hiller Zobel as he announced his decision.
The case has become a lightning rod for America’s conflicting emotions about who should care for children when parents work.
The judge’s decision to downgrade the conviction of the 19-year-old to manslaughter for the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen and give her credit for the 279 days she has spent in jail left prosecutors angry and defense attorneys claiming there had been “no winners.”
“I’m sickened by what happened today,” said District Atty. Thomas Reilly. “Matthew Eappen lived 262 days. Louise Woodward took his life in an extremely violent way and served 279 days. Did Matthew Eappen receive justice today?”
Defense attorney Andrew Good said the family’s initial reaction to the decision was “relief.”
Woodward sat impassively through the proceedings. Before sentencing, she reiterated her innocence.
After Zobel announced the sentence of time served, she turned to her lawyers for an instant. Near the back of the courtroom, Gary Woodward, the defendant’s father, clasped his hand over his face and began to cry.
“I do not denigrate Matthew Eappen’s death or his family’s grief,” Zobel said. “I do, however, recognize that mercy does not lessen opprobrium.”
The child’s parents, Drs. Sunil and Deborah Eappen, stayed out of sight Monday, but K.E. Eappen of Burr Ridge, Ill., Matthew’s paternal grandfather, said in a prepared statement that the family was “outraged and disappointed” with the judge’s decision.
Eappen said that the loss of Matthew had been “devastating” and that the family considered the au pair’s jail sentence to be “completely inadequate.”
“It makes recovery from this painful tragedy even more difficult,” Eappen said.
Sharon Spellman, sister of Deborah Eappen, and Matthew’s godmother who lives in Park Ridge, Ill., said her family was “stunned” by the ruling.
Spellman, who sat through most of the trial, called her godson’s death a “pure and simple case of child abuse” and “should be punished as such.”
“Notice the judge never said Louise Woodward wasn’t guilty; he only said he thought she deserved some compassion,” Spellman said. “Where is the compassion when it comes to Matthew?”
Spellman pointed to a 1989 Massachusetts trial in which Zobel let stand a second degree murder conviction in a baby-shaking case after the defense requested a reduction to manslaughter.
“It seems to me that the same rules should apply to all of us,” Spellman said. “You don’t kill babies.”
The prosecution plans to appeal the reduction of the conviction from second-degree murder. The judge ordered Woodward to remain in Massachusetts pending the outcome of the appeal, which could take up to a year.
Defense attorney Harvey Silverglate said Woodward would still appeal the reduced verdict. “Truth has its claims and we believe it is scientifically verifiable in this case,” he said. “There’s more at stake than just this case.”
The defense claimed forensic evidence showed the baby had suffered a fractured skull several weeks before the Feb. 4 incident that ended his life. The defense’s controversial decision to seek an acquittal rather than allow the jury to consider manslaughter was based on proving the earlier injury because the prosecution’s indictment said the baby died from a single incident of what their experts called “shaken baby impact syndrome.”
Defense lawyer Barry Scheck, who also was part of the O.J. Simpson defense, said, “We can only show that this was a tragic series of events that led to this accidental death.”
In his 16-page ruling, Zobel appeared to be leaning toward the defense team’s interpretation of events preceding the night of Matthew’s death, even if he still held Woodward responsible.
“Had the manslaughter option been available to the jurors, they might well have elected it, not out of compromise, but because that particular verdict accorded with at least one rational view of the evidence, namely: Matthew did indeed have a pre-existing, resolving (i.e., healing) blood clot.”
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His view of the evidence, he said, was that Woodward’s actions were “characterized by confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice (in the legal sense) supporting a conviction for second-degree murder.”
“Frustrated by her inability to quiet the child, she was `a little rough with him,’ under circumstances where another, perhaps wiser, person would have sought to restrain the physical impulse. The roughness was sufficient to start (or re-start) a bleeding that escalated fatally,” he wrote.
The judge rejected defense pleas to throw out the guilty verdict entirely or order a new trial. He said the jury’s finding that Woodward was responsible for the baby’s death “was not against the weight of the evidence.”
Many legal experts agreed with Zobel’s reasoning, saying it turned a questionable verdict into a just result.
“It is an extraordinary display of courage and indifference to public pressure by Judge Zobel in acknowledging an earlier mistake and trying to see that justice is done,” said Charles Ogletree, a criminal-justice expert at Harvard Law School.
Some legal experts castigated the judge for not allowing the jury the option of the manslaughter verdict in the first place.
“The judge kept the jury from doing what the judge now says is the right answer,” said University of Chicago law professor Albert Alschuler. “Some lawyers wanted to play all-or-nothing games, and the judge let them, or we wouldn’t have had this situation to begin with.”
Joseph Oteri, a Boston defense attorney, also took issue with the judge’s decision, at Woodward’s request, to let the jury only consider first- and second-degree murder.
“Basically what it does is give her two bites of the apple,” Oteri said. “It was a brilliant move on the defense’s part, not to let (prosecutors) charge manslaughter, and it worked out perfectly for them.”
Other legal experts said they thought prosecutors went too far in charging Woodward with first-degree murder. They said they thought the judge made the right call in exercising his discretion.
“He has dealt with this case very carefully and thoughtfully,” said Samuel Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “It’s very hard to believe that she intended to cause really serious bodily harm.”
The manslaughter conviction was in accord with what many jurors said after they found Woodward guilty of second-degree murder Oct. 30. In Massachusetts, that charge carries a mandatory life sentence with at least 15 years to be served before becoming eligible for parole.
One juror said he was relieved by Zobel’s ruling. “Had that option been before us, we may have come to the same conclusion, so I think we can live with it,” said Stephen Colwell.
For her millions of supporters in Britain and her sizable following in the U.S., where her trial has been the biggest ratings bonanza for cable-television’s Court TV since the Simpson trial, Woodward’s freedom was a time for elation.