Third shaken baby death ruling revised in Middlesex County
The state medical examiner’s office backtracked from an earlier finding of shaken baby syndrome, the third such revision among Middlesex County murder cases since last year, The Boston Globe reports.
Pallavi Macharla, 41, had been held without bail since March, after a neighbor’s baby in her care died. The medical examiner’s office initially said the injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome and blunt force trauma, and the Middlesex County District Attorney charged Macharla with murder.
But last week, the medical examiner’s office revised that shaken baby ruling, and prosecutors and attorneys agreed to release Macharla on bail. The medical examiner’s office still maintains the baby was killed by blunt force trauma, though a specialist for the defense concluded that the infant died of cardiac arrest.
The conclusion is the third shaken baby syndrome decision to be changed recently. In August, murder charges against Irish nanny Aisling Brady McCarthy were dropped after the medical examiner’s office said the baby’s death in that case was not necessarily a homicide.
And in September, prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Geoffrey Wilson after the medical examiner’s office found that the cause of a baby’s death could not be determined.
You can read the full story at The Boston Globe.
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