October 31, 1997, Friday

Mass. Jury Finds Au Pair Guilty In Baby's Death; English Teenager Faces Life For Second-Degree Murder

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 30

The English au pair accused of shaking a baby boy to death was found guilty of second-degree murder today by a Massachusetts jury, ending a three-week trial that transfixed observers on both sides of the Atlantic and evoked the fears of working parents everywhere.

A barely audible gasp of disbelief echoed in the stunned courtroom before Louise Woodward, 19, dissolved into sobs and crumpled in her seat. Susan Woodward, her hands shaking and her eyes rimmed with red, mouthed the word "unbelievable" to her husband, Gary, as their terrified daughter proclaimed her innocence.

"I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything, Daddy," the teenager wailed. "How could they do that to me? . . . I didn't do anything."

Defense attorneys huddled around the young woman from a small village outside Liverpool, England, smoothing her auburn hair and rubbing her back to quiet the sobs. Relatives and friends, who have said they believe the au pair was convicted in the news media even before the trial began in the 9-month-old's death, appeared to be in shock and shed few tears as they left the courtroom.

Sunil and Deborah Eappen, baby Matthew Eappen's parents, chose not to attend the verdict announcement. They watched the verdict on television. Family members and their supporters sat on the opposite side of the courtroom and showed no expression when the verdict was delivered shortly after 9:30 p.m., after nearly 25 hours of deliberations.

Woodward will remain in custody until her sentencing Friday morning. She faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.

Defense lawyers were devastated by the verdict and said they plan to file a motion for the judge to reconsider the verdict and grant a new trial. "We are stunned by this verdict, mortified by this verdict," defense lawyer Barry Scheck said tonight. "We will continue to fight."

The trial, televised daily on Court TV, propelled the debate over working parents and child care into the national consciousness. The image of an inexperienced au pair allegedly shaking and then dropping a baby onto the floor painted a nightmarish scenario for working parents who entrust their children's care to someone else and led to questions about whether the Eappens, both of whom are doctors, made wrong choices for their two sons.

Deborah Eappen, an ophthalmologist, works three days a week and received hate mail from people who argued she should have stayed at home; her husband, Sunil, is an anesthesiologist. Matthew died in his arms.

"I think there's no doubt that what happened was not an accident," Sunil Eappen said Wednesday night in a television interview with CBS's Bryant Gumbel. "I can't think about him more than a minute without breaking down."

The case also generated doubts about the efficacy of the government-sponsored au pair program, which attracts thousands of young foreigners to the United States each year. Testimony in this most Irish of American cities polarized a local public wary of Woodward's impassive demeanor and English viewers primed by O.J. Simpson's televised trial and suspicious of the U.S. justice system. Cameras are banned from British courtrooms.

Earlier today, Woodward seemed calm and at times even cheery as she read letters from home. Her family refused to comment on the case, but their faces betrayed the strain of waiting for the verdict. The Eappens had not appeared in court since deliberations began several days ago, but their relatives and friends continued to congregate in an anteroom off Courtroom 12A wearing caterpillar-shaped lapel pins in honor of Matthew's favorite toy, which played the song "You Are My Sunshine."

To win a first-degree murder conviction against Woodward, prosecutors would have had to prove that the crime was committed with malice and forethought. The lesser charge of second-degree murder required proof only of malice.

Prosecutors tried to portray Woodward as a teenager with a visa to party and an "aspiring little actress" more interested in attending at least 20 performances of the Broadway musical "Rent" than in taking care of a colicky baby and his brother, who is now 3.

Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Gerard T. Leone contended that Woodward shook Matthew on the afternoon of Feb. 4 and then slammed his head against a hard surface to stop his incessant crying. Matthew lapsed into a coma and died five days later at Children's Hospital in Boston as a result of a fractured skull and internal bleeding.

However, the defense team, paid for by EF Au Pair and led by former Simpson attorney Scheck, depicted Woodward as a young woman who balked at curfews and had broken house rules by talking on the phone more than five minutes each day but who was an innocent girl who loved children and would never do anything to harm her young charges.

When she testified, Woodward denied that she had forcibly shaken Matthew or thrown him to the ground out of frustration with his crying and her long working hours. She said Matthew frequently toppled over and may have struck his head when he stumbled near the steps of his play room a day before falling unconscious.

But Assistant District Attorney Martha Coakley said tonight there was no question that Matthew's injuries had been inflicted and were no accident. Jurors had to sift through 116 exhibits and the statements of 37 witnesses ranging from neurosurgeons to forensic pathologists. They twice asked for excerpts from testimony that dealt with whether the baby's head wound was old or new.

"The jury was able to see through the medical evidence that this child was harmed," Coakley said. She added that Woodward had "maintained a denial of any kind of responsibility from the beginning."

In Woodward's home town of Elton, England, villagers who gathered in a pub at 3 a.m. to hear the verdict cried and screamed in disbelief.

"She's incapable of an act of cruelty like that," Hazel Mayamba-Kasongo told CNN. "This is unacceptable."

"She was very quiet and very genuine," Kate Hagan, 19 and Woodward's best friend during their high school years, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "She could not have done this."

A similar case nearly two years ago in Loudoun County, Va., involving a Dutch au pair charged with shaking to death a newborn ended in a mistrial.