Manjit Basuta to be freed from US prison

NTI Manjit Basuta to be freed from US prison for killing a baby

Friday 1, August 2003

A British nanny who was jailed in the US for killing a baby is being officially paroled today. Manjit Basuta - who's 48 and from Slough in Berkshire - was sentenced to 25 years in 1999, for shaking a youngster in her care to death. Her sentence was reduced to eight years when she admitted involuntary manslaughter. She's due to leave jail on Monday when she'll be deported.

NRI Mrs Manjit Kaur Basuta, mother of three, and a former nurse, has been convicted of shaking to death a 13-month-old boy, Christopher Oliver Smith, "in a rage of frustration, because he would not break off from watching a TV programme to have his nappy changed."

Moving in 1989 from Ascot, Berks, to California, she had set up a day-care centre at her £500,000 home in San Diego, California.

It was alleged that she did not call the boy's mother to tell her what had happened, but instead took an employee to her lawyer's office to make a statement [perhaps aware of the way in which Louise Woodward had been questioned without representation immediately after a similar tragedy]. Oliver died after his mother, Audrey Amaral, who is separated from her husband, dropped him off on March 18 1998 at the centre.

Four days later, Manjit was arrested and held without bail for three days. Judge Bernard Revak then set bail at $100,000 and she was later released when the sum was raised by the local Hindi community.

After a County grand jury indicted her in April and added two charges relating to her allegedly threatening a witness, Superior Court Judge David Gill had Manjit rearrested. Bail was set at $1 million and she remained in jail with a bail review hearing set for April 14.

The defence claimed that an earlier injury had been aggravated by a fall, and there had been no violent shaking.

Cristina Carrillo, an undocumented immigrant from Guatamala, whom Manjit had employed to help in the day care centre, was the only adult who claimed to have witnessed the events leading to the toddler's death. She told police that Manjit became angry with the boy because "she called to him and he wouldn't respond to her." He was watching television and would not go to have his nappy changed. When he refused to come she grabbed his arms and shook him violently; Miss Carrillo said she saw her employer put the boy on the floor and continue to shake him until he turned blue and became unconscious

Defence attorney Eugene Iredale contended his client was innocent and claimed that the child died from earlier injuries, possibly at the hands of his mother, Audrey Amaral. In the absence of the jury, Superior Court Judge William Kennedy ruled that evidence of a previous injury could be heard during the trial, but that the injury could not be attributed to anyone in particular. {Surely, if there was any strength in this line of argument, this inhibition made defence impossible? It was a grave error by the defence attorney to attempt to blame the bereaved mother, and thus alienate the public and potential jurors at the eventual trial, unless he had considerable evidence.]

During the month-long trial, which was scarcely reported in Britain, the prosecution's strongest witness was Cristina Carrillo who testified through an interpreter that she had seen the toddler slammed down in anger.

She said her initial statement, that the boy had fallen on a brick patio while playing with other children was a lie, made because Manjit threatened to have her deported.. [Her statements to the police changed 12 times, and there are allegations that she was offered immunity from deportation if she revised her story.]

The boy died in hospital the day after the alleged slamming; an autopsy revealed a blood clot beneath his skull and massive swelling of the brain because of internal bleeding.

With the beginning of jury selection on May 10 Deputy District Attorney Dan Goldstein said that his office had dropped one of the two major charges against Manjit (second-degree murder) but refused to say why. [The lesser charge was punishable by 15 years to life in prison, while the murder count that remained has a maximum penalty of 25 years to life. Possibly the prosecution hoped that Manjit would admit the lesser charge but she refused to do so.]

Cross-questioned during her second day on the witness stand, Cristina Carrillo stuck to her account that Manjit in a fit of temper had shaken the child "very badly" and put him down hard. The defence attorney pointed to discrepancies between her testimony in court and statements she had given to the County grand jury during indictment. She had told the grand jury that the boy had been shaken once but now alleged he was shaken several times.

Mr Goldstein, prosecuting, told the court histrionically: "Oliver was not old enough to know what happened to him. He weighed 36 pounds so he was not strong enough to fend off his attacker. He was 29 inches tall so his legs were not long enough to run away from his attacker, and his arms were not strong enough to fight off an attacker. His neck muscles were not strong enough to survive a violent shake."

The defence claimed that Oliver had suffered a head injury some months prior to the accident and died after bumping his head while playing. Mr John Ronis, defence lawyer, said Oliver was outside playing when he fell unconscious and Manjit rushed out and tried to revive him. He had not been shaken until after he had collapsed and was unconscious.

Death had resulted from "spontaneous bleeding" consequent on the head injury months before the incident.

Superior Court Judge William Kennedy granted a prosecution request to call as many as a dozen witnesses in the next week.

At the end of the trial the jury brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty. Bail was refused pending sentencing a month later, and Manjit was committed immediately to jail, facing a possible full-life sentence. She broke down and wept.

A spokeswoman for the San Diego prosecutor said: "She'll be behind bars for the rest of her life."

Manjit's sister-in-law Manjit Singh, told reporters at her home in Birmingham:: "This is all just so unfair. She did not do it. There was so much evidence that showed she is innocent."

Speaking from the family's home in Slough, Berks, Manjit's brother, Amarjit Singh, said: "There will be an appeal, there is no doubt. We won't let this happen to her. She is innocent and there is no way we are going to leave her. I actually fear for my sister's life. I hope that she has the strength to pull through this. I fear she hasn't. . She has to believe in her faith in God.

"When she set up the day-care centre in America, she was obviously checked out by the local authority. She was registered and everything about her was checked."

Mr Singh added: "There are 32 counts of contradiction when you look at all the evidence in the case. There are so many disputes in the case that she is very shocked that this could have happened.

"We know that a child has been lost and we have never lost sight of that. The fact hasn't been lost with the family."

Writing in the Times, Helen Johnstone said that Manjit's family would appeal against the verdict on the grounds that critical medical evidence was excluded and that the child had a history of seizures consistent with his head injuries.

One of her brothers, David Singh, a science student from Birmingham, said that race was a factor in the verdict. "I wear a turban, and a lot of the jurors thought I was a Muslim from Iraq," he said.

Defence lawyer Mr Iredale said: "This was an emotional verdict with xenophobic overtones from a simple-minded jury that went along with received medical opinion."

His client was at the mercy of sentencing guidelines enshrined in a 1996 California law that requires child abuse resulting in bodily harm to toddlers to be treated as murder. "Child protection is a secular religion that has run out of control here," Mr Iredale said.

Manjit, who was born in Slough, has eight sisters and three brothers. She qualified as a midwife and worked in Ascot as a nurse before running shops with her husband. Ten years ago they moved to California, where she set up the day care centre. Her husband, also called Manjit, has given up his job to be at home with their sons aged 12, 18 and 21.

Fifty percent doubt
The trial of Mrs Manjit Basuta received very little publicity in comparison with the Louise Woodward case. Louise did not welcome massive publicity, but without it she would probably still be spending many years in jail. In Manjit's case, events in Kosovo meant there was little space available for reportage, also she was a "foreigner" in Britain because of racism, and a double-foreigner in San Diego.

There are very strong grounds for believing that all convictions for shaking babies to death (including that of child-carer Helen Stacey in Norwich) are perhaps 50 percent open to doubt. There is no space here for all the arguments but "The Lancet," bible of the British medical profession, in an editorial, has cautioned against assuming guilt.

The Louise Woodward Campaign for Justice listed 50 reasons for declaring her conviction false. Many are equally valid concerning Manjit and Helen Stacey.

Here is number 18: Several witnesses at the trial (including prosecution witnesses) testified that it would be a physical impossibility for a 22lb baby to be shaken in the manner alleged. Since the trial, many people have attempted to violently shake and then hurl to the floor a 22lb object such as a sandbag. Even with brief periods of rest, the Louise Woodward Campaign for Justice claims, "we are unaware of anyone who has successfully carried this out, including heavily-built sportsmen, let alone an 18-year-old girl of no particular athleticism."

Now with even less credibility we are led to believe that a woman of 44 could shake and hurl a 36lb infant with equal ferocity. And like Helen and Louise without leaving a bruise upon the body or a mark upon the floor to indicate violent impact.

Lying plays a central role in criminal law. The defendant, if convicted after denying guilt, is presumed to have lied. A defence lawyer regards it as a professional duty to lie, if he disbelieves the case put to him by the defendant he must try to make it sound credible. If prosecution witnesses differ from those from the defence, it is presumed that one or other is mistaken, in honest error, or lying. And the prosecution, too, is sometimes required to gild the lily or tell porkies.

When a parent or carer is charged with shaking a child to death, it is vital for the prosecution to exaggerate the violence to an extent almost beyond credibility, to obtain conviction. A lesser degree of force could kill, but not with the immediacy that would convict the last person to be in charge.

Professor A Kessler, Professor and Chief Emeritus Surgery (Neurosurgery) at Allergheny of the Health Sciences, wrote to the Louise Campaign on February 13, 1998, that it is a "well known neurosurgical principle that subdural haematomas are not, as a rule, rapidly occurring events. . . . the usual anamnesis is that the patient has had a bump on the head which they have forgotten and hours, days or weeks later depending on how profuse the bleeding they begin to have symptoms of headache and depending again on severity of bleeding, will deteriorate neurologically." Arterial bleeding in the head brings rapid symptoms and death can occur within hours.

In a footnote Professor Kessler adds: Re-bleeding may be an issue. After a primary injury, rebleeding can occur with little provocation."

In all three cases the defence claimed there had been primary injury, but the prosecutors poured scorn on the suggestion, and the jury (lacking medical knowledge) ignored it.

Manjit had three children of her own, Helen was raising one, with loving care. Both women enjoyed motherhood and went to considerable expense to set up as child-minders. They wanted to look after children. They must have experienced childish tantrums dozens or hundreds of times, and had coped calmly. Is it even feasible that they should have suddenly reacted with sub-human savagery and super-human violence, to perfectly normal situations?

There are glaring gaps in medical knowledge, and here is one of them, which may explain the deaths of these three infants.

Matthew Eappen, allegedly killed by Louise, was born prematurely, with subdural haemorrhage; Joseph Mackin (supposed victim of Helen) was also premature. For these babies, subdural haemorrhage is common; in full-term infants it is rare (but even one-in-a-thousand adds up to a huge total among millions of infants).

The condition tends to cure itself within weeks, and the haemorrhaged blood is reabsorbed.

But there is no reported research to show that weakness does not remain, with the possibility that, in a few babies, the slightest shake, or even normal handling or natural causes, might produce subdural re-bleeding, followed by death, and a conviction for murder or manslaughter.

Let's look again at 13-month-old Oliver, who is engrossed in a television programme, then called away for a nappy change.

He cries in protest, working himself into a screaming fit in which he turns purple with rage (we have all seen infants like this in supermarts). The heightened blood flow brings pressure to the blood vessels within his skull, including one that had ruptured at birth.

Basuta picks him up to comfort him, with a gentle shake to end the tantrum. And it is sufficient to cause re-bleeding. Or perhaps the abnormally fragile blood vessel had already ruptured, perhaps naturally, or as the result of a bump, and this was the cause of Oliver's outburst of screaming. (All infants bang themselves when trying to crawl or walk.)

Was Oliver a premature baby? If so, this could be great confirmation of this theory, but for all babies subdural haemorrhage may be rare but occurs in perhaps one-in-a-thousand births.

There is an appeal fund on behalf of Manjit, account number 20064770, Unity Trust Bank, 4 The Square, 171 Broad Street, Birmingham B15 1AR, which could help fund an appeal and hopefully bring justice.