Au Pair Freed; Conviction Cut to Manslaughter

Before a tense, packed courtroom, Superior Court Judge Hiller Zobel on Monday reduced to manslaughter the murder conviction of British au pair Louise Woodward in the February death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. Then the judge set her free, reducing Woodward’s sentence to time served, 279 days.

“Mercy does not lessen opprobrium,” Zobel said, explaining that he based the sentence on the same factors that moved him to lower Woodward’s conviction from second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter: that evidence in the case disclosed “confusion, fright and bad judgment, rather than rage or malice.”

Prosecutors, stressing the 19-year-old Woodward’s persistent lack of remorse over the death of the infant she was caring for, vowed to appeal. Pending that action, Woodward agreed to surrender her passport.

An international firestorm of publicity had turned the baby sitter from Elton, England, who had faced a mandatory life sentence into a kind of cult figure. As Zobel announced his decision, cheers erupted on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Thank you, Judge Zobel,” read one sign at The Rigger, a pub in Elton where 400 Woodward supporters were gathered. Andrew Miller, the member of Parliament who represents Elton, said: “We have been hoping all day for this decision but didn’t believe it because of all the setbacks we have had.”

Outside the Massachusetts courthouse, champagne corks popped. In an office turned into a Woodward support center in nearby Somerville, Maureen McFadden burst into tears of joy when she learned that Woodward would leave the courtroom a free woman. “This could have been me, a thousand and one times,” said McFadden, who came to this country from Ireland as a nanny more than 20 years ago.

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Prosecutors said Matthew’s parents, Drs. Sunil and Deborah Eappen, were unable to attend Monday’s court hearing “due to short notice.” A family friend said, however, that the Eappens had “taken some time off” after receiving threatening letters in the wake of Woodward’s murder conviction.

But Achamma Eappen, the baby’s grandmother, said from her home in suburban Chicago that Zobel’s action “still proves that she’s guilty.”

The case came to symbolize a nagging discomfort in this country over working parents who entrust their children’s care to others, and a resentment in England over a class system that exports working-class girls to serve in the homes of upwardly mobile Americans.

Woodward was hired through a large agency, EF Au Pair, to care for the Eappen children. An au pair is a young person who resides with a family and is paid living expenses and a small salary in exchange for child care. EF Au Pair paid for the high-powered defense team that represented Woodward, led by attorneys Barry Scheck and Harvey Silverglate.

Woodward had been caring for Matthew Eappen and his then-2-year-old brother, Brendan, on Feb. 4 when the younger child grew cranky as she was trying to bathe him. Woodward said she then called an emergency telephone number to say the infant was having trouble breathing. Massive head injuries were discovered, and after five days in a coma, the baby died.

Prosecutors insisted from the start that Woodward, who was alone with the children when she dialed the emergency number, was responsible for Matthew’s death. Defense attorneys suggested that the child’s cranial bleeding could have been caused by earlier injuries. Woodward steadfastly clung to blamelessness. In court Monday, she once again repeated, “I just maintain what I said at my last sentencing, that I am innocent.”

It was Matthew’s mother, an ophthalmologist, who recalled learning from doctors that there was bleeding behind her son’s eyes--an indication in an infant of cranial hemorrhage. “I knew what that meant,” Deborah Eappen testified in a soft, anguished voice.

A jury found Woodward guilty of shaking the baby to death and slamming him against a hard object. Under a carefully contrived strategy designed by Scheck and Silverglate and permitted by Zobel, jurors were limited to convicting Woodward of first- or second-degree murder or acquitting her.

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The all-or-nothing defense backfired when jurors found Woodward guilty of a charge bearing a mandatory life sentence. In the memorandum Zobel issued Monday to reduce that conviction, the judge withheld criticism of the defense attorneys’ tactics.

“Had it succeeded, the defense would have been hailed for its courage and foresight,” Zobel wrote.

But only last week, in an impassioned hearing before the same judge, Scheck and Silverglate conceded that restricting jury consideration to a charge of nothing less than murder was a mistake. The lawyers further argued that crucial medical evidence that would have exonerated their client was not provided by the prosecution in time for the jury to properly weigh it.

As a father and a grandfather, Zobel said Monday, he was sympathetic to Matthew Eappen’s parents. “In selecting the sentence here, I do not denigrate Matthew Eappen’s death, nor his parents’ grief,” the judge told the court.

But Zobel said he had concluded that while Woodward probably shook the baby and may have been “a little rough” with him, her actions did not constitute second-degree murder, as the jury had decided. Rather, the judge attributed Woodward’s actions to “confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice.”

A finding of malice was necessary for a second-degree murder verdict.

“After extensive, cool, calm reflection, I am morally certain that allowing this defendant on this evidence to remain convicted on second-degree murder would be a miscarriage of justice,” Zobel said.

But Tom O’Reilly, the district attorney for Middlesex County, where the Woodward trial took place, said late Monday that he was mystified by what had transpired.

“I don’t know what happened here, and I’m not going to speculate,” O’Reilly said. “But I’ve never seen anything like it.”

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Times staff writer William D. Montalbano in London contributed to this story.