Prosecutors have stayed a manslaughter charge against an intellectually vulnerable woman facing trial in the death of her toddler stepson.
The decision comes nearly two months after a provincial court judge ruled the woman’s alleged confession to the crime was inadmissible in court, as it was made after hours of “psychological pummelling” by investigators.
“We are of the opinion there is no reasonable likelihood of convicting the accused based on the best evidence now available to the Crown, prosecutor Daniel Chaput told Judge Don Slough at a court hearing Monday morning.
The woman, who is 24 years old, was arrested in April 2020 following the death of her two-year-old stepson. The woman cannot be identified under terms of a court-ordered publication ban.
Chaput said there was insufficient evidence to prove the child didn’t die as the result of an accident, as maintained by the accused.
“At best, we are able to establish that although the fatal injury is highly suspicious for inflicted harm, there are possible accidental explanations for the injury,” Chaput said.
The woman called 911 the afternoon of March 22, 2020, after finding the child injured and unresponsive in the basement of their Snowden Avenue home.
In an interview with police that same day, the woman said she was upstairs making lunch for the child and his three siblings when she heard a loud bang from the basement. She said she returned to the basement and found the child on his back on the floor, surrounded by books, adjacent to a bookcase.
The woman “provided perhaps speculative explanations for how the child may have been accidentally injured,” including a fall from the bookcase or a fall down the stairs, Chaput said.
The child died in hospital two days later. An autopsy showed the child died as the result of an acute subdural hematoma and suffered “significant brain swelling and damage,” Chaput said.
Police arrested the woman a week later and after an 11-hour interview charged her with manslaughter. The woman repeatedly denied harming the child before telling investigators near the end of the interview she was overwhelmed caring for four children and threw the child.
Slough, in a Feb. 16 written decision, ruled the statement inadmissible, finding the aggressive police interrogation left the woman to believe “the only way the questioning would cease (would be) if she adopt(ed) some version of the facts suggested by the police.”
A clinical psychologist previously testified the woman suffered a brain injury following a car accident, has an “extremely low” IQ, with a very low verbal comprehension level and extremely limited ability to understand abstract concepts.
During the April 3 interview an investigator became “increasingly aggressive” with the woman, engaged in “a lengthy personal attack,” and showed her a graphic autopsy photo, Slough said in his February ruling.
The autopsy photo “can only be described as gruesome and shocking,” Slough said. “Showing (the accused) this photograph served no legitimate purpose; rather it was intended as a brutal psychological shock to provoke an emotional response and perhaps a confession.”
Following Slough’s ruling, Crown prosecutors consulted with the pathologist who performed the autopsy and were told that an accidental cause of the child’s injuries, while unlikely, could not be ruled out, Chaput said Monday.
“In the absence of a confession offering a non-accidental explanation to the injury… we are left in a factual vacuum upon which no argument can be crafted in favour of conviction,” Chaput said.
The woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2021, but was later allowed to withdraw the plea after arguing she had been pressured by police to confess and that her lawyers at the time had not properly informed her about the ramifications of her decision.
“I just wanted to get out of (the police interrogation),” the woman testified at a 2022 hearing to withdraw her guilty plea. “I was so scared and anxious. An officer told me he just wanted to hear anything. I assumed it would get me out of there,” she said.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.