Louise Woodward (born 1978) is a British former
au pair
An au pair (; plural: au pairs) is a helper from a foreign country working for, and living as part of, a host family. Typically, au pairs take on a share of the family's responsibility for childcare as well as some housework, and receive a monet ...
, who at the age of 18 was accused of second degree murder but subsequently convicted of the
involuntary manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th c ...
(reduced from the jury trial verdict) of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen in
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...
, United States.
Background
Five days after being admitted to
Children's Hospital
A children's hospital is a hospital that offers its services exclusively to infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In certain special cases, they may also treat adults. The number of children's hospitals proliferated in the 20th ...
in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Matthew Eappen fell into a
coma
A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...
and died on 9 February 1997, from a fractured skull and
subdural hematoma
A subdural hematoma (SDH) is a type of bleeding in which a Hematoma, collection of blood—usually but not always associated with a traumatic brain injury—gathers between the inner layer of the dura mater and the arachnoid mater of the meninges ...
. He was also found to have a fractured wrist, an unnoticed and unexplained injury from a month earlier. Lois E.H. Smith, an
ophthalmologist
Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgery, surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders.
An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Followin ...
at the hospital, observed
retinal hemorrhage
Retinal hemorrhage (UK English: retinal haemorrhage) is a disorder of the eye in which bleeding occurs in the retina, the light sensitive tissue, located on the back wall of the eye. There are photoreceptor cells in the retina called rods and c ...
s judged characteristic of
shaken-baby syndrome.
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
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, this phrase means "put" or "placed", and she claimed she was saying that she "placed the baby on the bed". In American English, ''popped'' suggests violence, especially when in reference to acts of physical assault such as punching. Her defense lawyers argued to the jury that the word ''
popped'' does not have the same meaning as in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
. However, in addition to "popping" him on the bed, the police maintained that she also said that she 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.
Woodward was arrested on 5 February and held for assault and battery initially, then murder when Matthew died. A grand jury decided on a first-degree murder charge in March. She was denied bail and held until trial at the
MCI-Framingham prison, maximum-security unit.
Media coverage of the case was intense, nowhere more so than in Britain.. Before the trial, the defense tried to move it to another city, arguing that a local jury would be too biased to render a fair verdict. The judge disagreed and denied the defence motion.
Trial
The presiding judge was
Hiller B. Zobel. The prosecution, led by Assistant
District Attorney
In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...
Gerard Leone, along with Assistant District Attorney
Martha Coakley
Martha Mary Coakley (born July 14, 1953) is an American lobbyist and lawyer who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County from 1999 to 20 ...
, presented eight physicians involved in Matthew's care, including a
neurosurgeon
Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and peri ...
, an
ophthalmologist
Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgery, surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders.
An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Followin ...
, a
radiologist
Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiatio ...
, two
pathologists
A list of people notable in the field of pathology.
A
* John Abercrombie, Scottish physician, neuropathologist and philosopher.
* Maude Abbott (1869–1940), Canadian pathologist, one of the earliest women graduated in medicine, expert in co ...
, and an expert in
child abuse
Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to a ...
, 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 him—injuries that they claimed would have been expected if he had been violently shaken. The prosecution had also claimed initially that his 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 his injury may have occurred three weeks before the date of death, implying that his parents, Sunil and Deborah Eappen, both of whom were doctors, might be implicated in negligence or abuse of the child. He had old wrist injuries that may have been incurred before Woodward even arrived at the house. She, however, claimed under cross-examination that she never noticed any slight bumps, marks or any unusual behaviour by him at any time prior to the night he was taken to the hospital.
The lead counsel at Woodward's trial, and the architect of her medical and forensic defense, was
Barry Scheck
Barry Charles Scheck (born September 19, 1949) is an American lawyer. He received national media attention while serving on O. J. Simpson's defense team, collectively dubbed the " Dream Team", helping to win an acquittal in the highly publicize ...
, co-founder of the
Innocence Project
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent futur ...
. Scheck was hired and paid for by her employer
EF Education First
EF Education First (abbreviated as EF) is an international education company that specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degree programs, and cultural exchange. The company was founded in 1965 by Bertil Hult in the Swe ...
's Cultural Care Au Pair. As part of the defense strategy, her attorneys requested that the jury not be given the option of convicting her of manslaughter (a
lesser included offense
In criminal law, a lesser included offense is a crime for which all of the elements necessary to impose liability are also elements found in a more serious crime. It is also used in non-criminal violations of law, such as certain classes of tr ...
), and instead either convict her of murder or find her not guilty. When personally questioned about this decision by the judge, she agreed with her lawyers. 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; she 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.
On 30 October 1997, after 26 hours of deliberations, the jury found her guilty of second-degree murder. The following day, Judge Zobel sentenced her to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years to be served.
[
]
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. However, this was of no legal consequence. None of the jury "thought she tried to murder him", one member said.[
On 10 November, at a post-conviction relief hearing, Judge Zobel reduced the conviction to ]involuntary manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th c ...
, 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".
Woodward's sentence was reduced to time served
In criminal law, time served is an informal term that describes the duration of pretrial detention (remand), the time period between when a defendant is arrested and when they are convicted. Time served does not include time served on bail but ...
(279 days) and she was freed. Assistant District Attorney Gerald Leone then appealed the judge's decision to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously functi ...
. Woodward's lawyers also asked the court to throw out her manslaughter conviction. The court affirmed the guilty verdict by a 7–0 vote. However, in a 4–3 split decision, the court rejected the prosecution's appeal against the reduction of the conviction to involuntary manslaughter, and the sentence, on 16 June 1998. Woodward then returned to the United Kingdom.
Polygraph testing
Before the trial on 7 May 1997, Woodward decided to undergo a polygraph
A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked an ...
examination conducted by David C. Raskin, a polygraph examiner hired by her own lawyers. During the course of the examination, she was asked questions about whether she caused injury to Matthew while he was in her care on 4 February 1997. She denied having caused any injuries to him, and Raskin concluded that her answers to these questions were truthful to a confidence level of 95 percent. Raskin's results were evaluated by Charles Honts, another polygrapher hired by her defense lawyers, who also claimed that she had answered truthfully when responding to relevant questions about whether she had injured him.
Aftermath
On returning home, Woodward gave a press conference, which was broadcast live in the UK and the US. She said that she would be giving an interview to the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, for no money, and wanted to return to her life. The interview was conducted by
'', in which she maintained her innocence. In a later interview, Woodward admitted to "lightly shaking" the unresponsive baby,