At a pre-trial hearing near Boston yesterday a defence lawyer for Irish nanny Aisling Brady McCarthy argued that 90 per cent of the evidence used to charge her client with murder should have been deemed inadmissible.
The 35-year-old Cavan woman was charged earlier this year with causing the death of one-year-old Rehma Sabir in the Boston suburb of Cambridge in January.
She wept before being led away after a hearing that lasted almost two hours. Her illegal status has led to the authorities keeping her in custody since her arrest not long after the death.
Yesterday defence lawyer Melinda Thompson reiterated their case that the accused is innocent. She entered a motion to have the charges dropped during testimony which gave a detailed challenge to the prosecution’s case.
The accused was in attendance throughout the hearing at Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, near Boston.
'Knowingly deceptive'
Ms Thompson accused the prosecution of "knowingly presenting false and deceptive" evidence to a grand jury hearing. This was robustly denied by assistant district attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
Ms McCarthy’s lawyer deplored what she called “blatantly inadmissible” character evidence and prior injury evidence which, she alleged, were included to make it look like her client had abused the child over a period of time and was therefore responsible for the murder.
She also claimed the grand jury never cross-examined any of the other witnesses about long-bone fractures which the medical examiner said dated back up to two months.
Autopsy results showed the child suffered subdural haemorrhaging as well as bruising around her lower body and buttocks. The prosecution has stated that her injuries were consistent with “violent shaking and impact to the head”.
The prosecution’s case is that baby Rehma was alone with Ms McCarthy on her first birthday before she slipped out of consciousness. She was taken to hospital but died two days later, on January 16th.
Ms Thompson criticised the “editorial comment” made by a witness from the neighbourhood during testimony as to the nature of the child’s crying, as well as evidence presented about texts sent by the defendant to her husband about how unhappy she was at her job.
Friends and relations are planning to hold a fundraising event in two weeks’ time at which members of the Irish community in Boston will be asked to contribute towards mounting legal costs.
“Aisling was falsely accused of harming a child in her care and wrongfully imprisoned,” stated a press release from the Brady and McCarthy families. “As a family we are 100 per cent behind Aisling, she is innocent of this crime.”
The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for October 17th.