I think we felt even as he said this afternoon, "I will sentence her as if this jury returned a verdict of manslaughter," that the sentence that followed wasn't expected, it didn't really make sense in light of everything he said.

It doesn't sit right in the sense of the jury verdict, and what they said, and his also saying Louise Woodward is responsible for this child's death.

We thought perhaps he wanted more leeway in sentencing and wanted to do something other than life, but to go to the other extreme, which he did, saying, "Now you can walk out of here," it was shocking to us.

When you look at the Massachusetts rule, which is 25B, it gives the judge an ability to maybe lessen the sentence, to put it more in line with other like cases. That's given to the judge to sort of maybe balance and ratchet up or ratchet down what a jury does, but to really run an end run around what the jury does is beyond the scope of that statute, and if you looked at other kinds of cases where babies are killed by their caretakers, they're second degree cases or manslaughter cases. You don't find a sentence like this.

One of the commentators today mentioned, and I think aptly so, that if you break a baby's bone or give him a head injury, you can face up to 15 years in prison for that, because children are deemed to be vulnerable. The sentence almost trivializes his own decision that she killed this baby.

At every stage of the game, the defendant had the upper hand. Even when the defense didn't want the manslaughter charge to go to the jury we fought for that because we thought that was fair. Now Judge Zobel says, "It doesn't matter that I didn't send manslaughter to the jury, but I'm going to find that anyway and, by the way, I'm going to reduce the sentence," it doesn't seem to make sense to us and I don't see how it could make sense to the Eappens.

Ordinarily, in Middlesex [County] at least, the practice is to have a pre-sentence report, to have a sentence hearing 2 or 3 weeks down the road, which gives everybody time, including Probation,to do a pre-sentence report, to allow the victim to come in, to do an impact statement.

It seems in some ways that the timing of this, five hours after his issuance of his decision to us and on the Internet, that he would sentence, maybe suggested that he didn't need or want the impact statement. And I think he knew or could have known that we would not be able on such short notice to bring in the victims in this case.

In some ways, it seems to me that the sentence he gave had nothing to do with the Eappens. The sentence he gave was solely based on his own version of the facts...that he outlined in the decision, and his own idea at the time of what he thought was fair.

It doesn't seem that there was any consideration of what might be for the victims, and I'm not saying that is necessarily his role, but his role is to be consistent, to be predictable, to give sentences that make sense on the facts, but also in light of what other people get for other kinds of crimes like murder and like manslaughter, particularly when it's a helpless child.

He stepped in in some ways, and created in his decision a whole scenario that was never argued by anybody, was certainly never presented and which even today the defense says, "We don't agree with that." So to the extent that he's followed his own conscience, that may be, but it's a decision that it seems to me is outside what the jury rejected.

We always felt that was the quintessential jury decision: to find what was her state of mind. That's what was so disturbing in some ways, is that they had that choice, they made it.

If they didn't find that state of mind, they should have acquitted her. They were told that by the judge, they followed his instructions. I mean, our goal was always to make sure that the person who killed Matthew Eappen would be held responsible. We did what the system requires; the jury found her guilty of that.

To the extent that you say, was it murder or manslaughter and how much time should she do, to some extent those are always judicial decisions. But to say, well, we're going to disregard the jury verdict even though there was enough evidence for them to find, and indeed Judge Zobel said, I find the weight of the evidence is with the jury's verdict, it was really an end run around to say, well, I'm going to do what I want, to some respect, I'm going to reduce it and I'm going to give her time served. And that just seems to be something that's hard for us to accept.

She still is the one who is responsible for Matthew Eappen's death, and I think people have a right to say, well, what is the appropriate sentence for that?

No one on our side, no one who's working to protect kids, takes delight in the fact that someone goes to jail or someone else's family is disrupted by it.

We're just looking for something that makes sense and something that will provide a deterrent to other people. Clearly, we feel that the right decision was made and Louise Woodward is responsible for the death. To the extent that sentencing is always a judicial prerogative and sometimes we like it and sometimes we don't, that's not the issue.

Judges, just like anybody else, need to give their thought process so people can see whether it was arbitrary or whether it was reasoned.

Trials are of a particular set of circumstances about a particular case. It doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't fit in with what we do and how we do it to say, well, let's take this to an independent panel and have a debate on it. That's like, let's go out behind the woodshed and sort this out.

We had a forum, we now have appeals to take on the evidence. My only comment is, I'm confident that if you talk to anybody about why this baby died, talk to anybody who knows about it...the doctors who do these cases say you will not see this [piecing together of scientific evidence] except in a courtroom.

We have Louise Woodward, in light of Judge Zobel's reduction, standing up and saying, "I'm innocent." That does not seem to be a particularly rehabilitatable defendant.

I think that would have been a mitigating factor. Like in any case, you look at the defendant's ability and willingness to accept. At this stage, I'm not sure what we would have recommended. It depends on when that acknowledgement came, whether it was geniune.