Massachusetts Court Is Urged to Send Au Pair Back to Prison

Prosecutors asked Massachusetts’ highest court Tuesday to send Louise Woodward back to prison, arguing that a judge usurped the jury’s role when he reduced the English au pair’s second-degree murder conviction to manslaughter.

“There is no need for a jury system if the verdict of 12 unanimous citizens may be overturned by a judge who found different facts than those necessarily found by the jury,” the prosecutors said.

Woodward, 19, had faced a mandatory life sentence with no parole for 15 years, but Judge Hiller Zobel reduced her conviction and decided that the 279 days she had spent in jail was punishment enough.

Zobel “in effect, treated the defendant as if she had been acquitted” in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen, prosecutors said in their appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court.

They said Woodward’s second-degree murder conviction should be reinstated. The high court also could order a new trial.

The appeal, which had been expected, was tentatively scheduled to be argued Dec. 3.

Woodward’s lawyers said they will try to block the high court from even considering the appeal or returning Woodward to prison until the case goes through the usual hearing in the state’s mid-level Appeals Court.

“There does not appear to be any emergency or other justification in this case for bypassing the normal appellate process,” the defense argued. Taking such pleas directly to the Supreme Judicial Court is not unheard of.

The prosecutors said Zobel overstepped his power by composing his own theory to explain the baby’s death, a theory neither the prosecution nor the defense had suggested at her trial.

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Prosecutors said Woodward fatally injured Matthew out of frustration with her job by shaking him and slamming his head into a hard object Feb. 4. He died five days later. Defense attorneys said the injuries had occurred earlier.

The judge decided that Woodward only “was a little rough with” the baby. He said she acted out of confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice.

“If this judge could arrive at this result upon these facts, then every trial judge would have the power to nullify the law, silence the people’s elected voice and dispense with the jury system altogether,” prosecutors said.