October 14

Dr. Lois Smith, the opthamologist who reviewed Matthew Eappen's eye examination and autopsy report, returned to the stand. She continued to maintain her belief that the infant's injuries could not have been caused by anything other than shaken baby impact syndrome. According to Smith, the force of the shaking and the impact with which the infant's head allegedly slammed against a hard surface was the equivalent of a truck hitting an infant in a baby carriage. Smith also said that the injuries that caused Matthew's death were inflicted between minutes and hours before he was admitted to Children's Hospital in Boston.

During his cross-examination of Dr. Smith, defense attorney Barry Scheck suggested that a drawing of Matthew's eyes done at the time of his examination does not show the retinal hemorrhaging that Smith had said resulted from violent shaking. In a major concession, Smith admitted that if this drawing is correct, then her theory about the infant dying from shaken baby syndrome is wrong. However, Smith preferred to characterize the drawing as "incomplete" rather than inaccurate.

	Oct. 14: Dr. Lois Smith admits to defense attorney Barry Scheck that her theory about the baby dying from shaken baby syndrome may be wrong.

Then police detective William Byrne, who interviewed defendant Louise Woodward on the day of the incident, took the stand. Byrne quoted Woodward as saying that she had been "a little rough" with Matthew. Woodward also allegedly told Byrne that the baby had been cranky the entire day and that she was angry and frustrated by his non-stop crying. According to Byrne, Woodward said that at one point during the day, she had tossed Matthew on a bed.

Later that day, while preparing Matthew's bath, she dropped him onto a towel on the bathroom floor, and Woodward said that he may have struck his head on the lower side of the tub. In spite of this, Matthew seemed fine when Woodward put him down for a nap. However, Byrne testified, when she checked on Matthew, he was unresponsive and not breathing. Woodward tried to perform CPR on the infant, but then she decided to call 911. Byrne noted that Woodward seemed perfectly calm during her interview and never asked about Matthew's condition.

During cross-examination by Woodward's other attorney, Andrew Good, Byrne admitted that during a meeting with his supervisor, he did not mention Woodward's alleged dropping of the infant on the bathroom floor. Byrne also said he never examined the bathroom floor or towels for any signs (such as Matthew's blood) of the infant's fall. He even suggested to a friend of the Eappens that Woodward may be a "borderline hero" because of her attempt to revive Matthew.

After Byrne's testimony, Dr. Stacey Linwood, Matthew Eappen's pediatrician, testified that Matthew seemed to be a normal, healthy baby with no unusual injuries. However, Linwood, who was the baby's doctor since he was two-weeks-old, said that Matthew suffered a subdural hematoma during birth. (A subdural hematoma is a mass of clotted blood that forma in brain tissue as a result of a broken blood vessel.) But, Linwood said, this injury was common among infants, and Matthew's subdural hematoma healed within a month after his birth. During cross-examination, Linwood admitted that she had last examined Matthew when he was six-months-old. (Matthew was eight-and-a-half-months old when he died.) Linwood was not scheduled to examine the baby again until he was nine-months-old, and she said she did not know what he experienced between his last examination and the time of his death.

The day's testimony ended with two family friends of the Eappens coming to the stand. They both testified that Matthew Eappen appeared to be a normal, healthy baby. One friend, Paula McCue, testified that Louise Woodward told her that she panicked when she realized Matthew was not breathing. McCue quoted Woodward as saying, "I picked him up, and I shook him a little bit."

October 15

Dr. Eli Newberger, a pediatrician who examined Matthew Eappen at Children's Hospital on the day of the alleged incident with defendant Louise Woodward, testified that he firmly believed that Matthew was a victim of shaken baby syndrome. Newberger said that the injuries the infant sustained were inflicted and that none of the injuries could have occurred accidentally.

"My opinion is that this child was violently shaken for a prolonged period," Newberger said. "This shaking was to such a violent degree that it would have required as much energy as an adult could muster, sustained over a period of time up to or exceeding a minute, possibly delivered in intervals."

	Oct. 15: Dr. Eli Newberger, a pediatrician who examined Matthew Eappen, describes the shaking that allegedly caused the infant's fatal injuries.

According to Newberger, Matthew's was grim and that he would have become comatose almost immediately after the infliction of his injuries.

"There was effectively no neurological function...I believe his [Matthew's] condition was irreversible," Newberger told the jury. "I believe that on February 9 [the day the infant was removed from life support] this child was brain dead as a result of neurological trauma. My opinion is that all of the injuries are attributable to child abuse."

Defense attorney Barry Scheck challenged Newberger's theories during cross-examination. Dr. Newberger refused to change his belief that the force needed to inflict Matthew Eappen's head injuries would be the equivalent of a child falling out of a second story window onto concrete. Newberger said that Matthew's injuries occurred shortly before he arrived at the hospital.

However, Newberger did admit to Scheck that he is not an expert in radiology, opthamology, or biomechanics. Much of the cross-examination exchange between Newberger and Scheck appeared confrontational, with Newberger at times accusing Scheck of distorting his testimony. And, despite his certainty that Matthew suffered from shaken baby syndrome, Newberger told Scheck that he would change his opinion if there was neuropathological evidence that the infant suffered from head injuries weeks before his February 4 incident with Woodward.

Then, the mother of Matthew Eappen, Deborah Eappen, an opthamologist, took the stand. Deborah and her husband, Sunil Eappen, hired Louise Woodward as a nanny in November 1996. From almost the beginning, the Eappens and Woodward disagreed over whether Woodward should have a curfew. Mrs. Eappen said that Woodward complained of having to following her previous employers' curfew and that she did not want a curfew. So, the Eappens agreed to give Woodward a one-month trial period without a curfew. However, Mrs. Eappen said, the no-curfew policy did not work; frequently, Woodward would come home late at night after going out with friends and would not be able to wake up on time in the morning to care for Matthew and his brother, two-year-old Brendan. Mrs. Eappen also claimed that Woodward would seem lazy and unresponsive to her sons. On January 28, the Eappens told Woodward that she would have to follow a curfew if she was to remain employed.

Mrs. Eappen said that her baby appeared normal and healthy in the days leading up to the incident. But on the afternoon of February 4, Mrs. Eappen was paged by Woodward, who told her that Matthew was breathing abnormally. According to Mrs. Eappen, Woodward said that the infant had been "screaming and screaming. She heard him stop crying [after leaving him alone to go into the bathroom], and when she came back, his eyes looked glazed over." Woodward allegedly told Mrs. Eappen that she had not dropped Matthew or treated him roughly. (This testimony contradicts what Woodward allegedly told police detectives.)

When Mrs. Eappen saw Matthew in the hospital and examined his eyes with a special instrument, she saw extensive retinal hemorrhaging, a sign of shaken baby syndrome.

"I knew what that meant," Mrs. Eappen said. "I was shocked...I couldn't believe it."

The most emotional testimony part of Deborah Eappen's testimony came when she described her son's five days in the hospital on life support and his last moments alive after being removed from life support.

"We [members of the Eappen family] all took turns holding Matthew," she said. We played children's music. We lit my grandmother's candle, and we prayed...And then Matty died."

	Oct. 15: Deborah Eappen, the mother of Matthew Eappen, describes her son's dying moments after he was removed from life support.

During cross-examination by defense attorney Andrew Good, Mrs. Eappen conceded that she and her husband had a generally good relationship with Woodward and that Woodward seemed in good spirits in the days leading up the incident. Mrs. Eappen also acknowledged that Woodward received a good recommendation from her previous employers.

Good suggested to Mrs. Eappen that she prematurely assumed that Woodward was responsible for Matthew's injuries when she asked her about the exact chronology of the day's events leading up to the alleged shaking. (Mrs. Eappen told Woodward that the hospital wanted to know about the events; the hospital never made such a request.) When asked whether she had misled Woodward with her questioning, Mrs. Eappen admitted, "Yes...I wanted to know how long he [Matthew] had been like that."

October 16

Deborah Eappen, the mother of Matthew Eappen, returned to the stand for cross-examination by the defense. She agreed that the notes from an interview she gave to police indicated that her son was crying when she went to work the morning of February 4 (the day of the alleged shaking incident with Louise Woodward). Mrs. Eappen also testified that she had no idea that Matthew had suffered a broken wrist sometime before February 4 and that the baby never showed any signs of the injury. (The autopsy on the baby showed that he had broken his wrist a few weeks before the alleged incident with Woodward.)

Defense attorney Andrew Good focused on notes Mrs. Eappen had made when she spoke to Woodward over the phone after Matthew's admission to Children's Hospital. Mrs. Eappen knew about the extent of her son's head injury and asked Woodward to tell her about the events leading up to his hospitalization. Mrs. Eappen said that Woodward told her that Matthew had taken an unusually long nap that morning and that he had to be awakened for lunch. Woodward also allegedly told Eappen that Matthew had not fallen that afternoon and had not bumped his head on the side of the bathtub during his bath. (This contradicts prior police testimony that Woodward told investigators that Matthew accidentally hit his head on the side of the tub.) However, Mrs. Eappen said that Woodward told her that the baby had fallen over on the stairs the previous day and suggested that he may have struck his head then. Woodward also never told Mrs. Eappen that she may have been rough with Matthew.

Then the prosecution brought Kathleen Sorabella, an avid theatergoer who went to see the musical Rent 40 times during its run in Boston, to the stand. She and her husband regularly saw Woodward standing on a "rush line" for tickets to Rent. (A "rush line" is a special line in which people wait for $20 tickets to extra seats available in the first two rows of the theater.) Sorabella said that on one occasion in December 1996, she and Woodward had a conversation while they were waiting on line, and Woodward told her how much she disliked her job. Sorabella claimed that Woodward said the Eappens were very demanding and always told her when to come home at night. Woodward also allegedly complained that the boys she cared for were spoiled and constantly cranky. She allegedly described baby Matthew as a "brat." (Sorabella approached police with this story after she had read about the Woodward case in the newspaper this past February.)

During cross-examination, defense attorney Good tried to cast doubt on Sorabella's credibility by suggesting that she was a "Rent groupie" who was jealous of Woodward's social relationships with several of the musical's cast members. Good also pointed out several discrepancies between Sorabella's employment and financial history and the information she provided on an application for automobile financing. However, Good did not challenge the specifics of Sorabella's story about Woodward.

Ruhana Augustin, another English au pair and Woodward's best friend in Boston, also came to the stand. Like Woodward, Augustin came to work in the United States as a live-in nanny in June 1996. She went with Woodward to see Rent several times, and they enrolled in a drama class together. Augustin and Woodward went out together every night and had daily phone conversations.

According to Augustin, Woodward had an "on again, off again" relationship with Deborah Eappen and that Woodward's biggest complaints about the Eappens was their concerns about her curfew and that they gave her too much work to do. Woodward sometimes complained that Matthew cried a lot and that the infant and his brother annoyed her. However, Augustin said, Woodward generally liked the boys and would show her friends pictures of them.

On the day of Matthew's alleged shaking, Augustin said that she and Woodward spoke on the phone for about an hour and a half. Augustin did not remember hearing Matthew crying in the background. During the evening, after the infant was hospitalized, Woodward allegedly told Augustin that she gently shook the baby after she realized something was wrong with him. Regarding the testimony of the previous witness Sorabella, Augustin remembered meeting her on the "rush lines." But she did not recall overhearing Woodward talk to Sorabella about her job and the Eappens.

Woodward's previous employer, Harris Komishane, testified that he and his wife had hired Woodward to take care of their child when she first came to Massachusetts. Although Komishane was initially concerned about Woodward's lack of experience and confidence in handling his baby, he said that she improved and did a good job. However, the Komishanes' 11 p.m. curfew on Woodward was the reason she left them. Woodward complained that curfew did not allow her to enjoy Boston night life. (And the Komishanes lived too far from Boston for Woodward to commute conveniently to and from home.)

The final witness prosecutors called was Sunil Eappen, an anesthesiologist and father of Matthew Eappen. He mirrored his wife's account of their battles with Woodward over her curfew.

"I can't remember a single evening when she [Woodward] was home," Mr. Eappen said. "The mornings after were a problem." (The Eappens claimed that Woodward's inability to get up to care for their children the morning after a late night out was a constant problem.)

Mr. Eappen said that Matthew was behaving normally in the days leading up to the February 4 incident. He tearfully described the day he received the phone call at work telling him that his son was in the hospital. Then, the father slowly described the moment he and his wife decided to take Matthew off life support.

"We prayed, got communion, and we decided we'd all hold Matthew," Mr. Eappen said. "And we stopped the ventilator, and just held him. Matthew died while I was holding him."

Mr. Eappen also claimed that he did not know about Matthew's broken wrist that apparently occurred weeks before the shaking. The prosecution rested its case with Sunil Eappen's testimony. The defense will begin presenting its case the next morning

October 17

	O.J. Simpson comments on defense lawyer Barry Scheck
	During a court recess on October 17, Court TV anchor Carol Randolph spoke with O.J Simpson. (Barry Scheck was part of Simpson's defense team during his criminal trial.) Simpson was responding to the many viewer comments about Scheck's style and tactics during the Woodward trial.	READ THE COMMENTS

Louise Woodward's defense began to present her case today by bringing various character witnesses to the stand. Two of Woodward's former teachers from England said that Woodward was a good student, recognized by her peers as honest and non-violent. In addition, a former assistant at the Children's Museum in Boston (where Woodward sometimes volunteered) said that the defendant was enthusiastic and showed patience while working with children.

All these character witnesses characterized Woodward as a gentle, responsible person who could not have caused the head injuries that led to Matthew Eappen's death. Until today, jurors had seen only the prosecution's portrait of Woodward as a disgruntled teen nanny who was not as responsible as she should have been towards the Eappen boys. According to prosecutors, Woodward was only interested participating in Boston night life. The defense, however, tried to give jurors a different picture.

After the testimony of the character witnesses, defense attorney Barry Scheck called forensic neuropathologist Jan Leestma to the stand. Dr. Leestma said that the infant did not die from injuries the prosecution says came from shaken baby impact syndrome. Describing microscopic photos of Matthew's brain, he testified that the baby suffered from a head injury approximately three weeks before the alleged shaking incident with Woodward on February 4 and that he died from those prior injuries. Dr. Leestma believed that the prior head injury went unnoticed and began to spontaneously bleed within the brain. This led to the formation of the subdural hematoma which put pressure on Matthew's brain. According to Dr. Leestma, this pressure caused Matthew's restless and subsequent comatose state on February 4. Dr. Leestma testified that the alleged shaking incident "did not happen." He said that Matthew's prior injury could have been inflicted but also could have occurred accidentally. Dr. Leestma also said the infant's skull fracture and subdural hematoma could have resulted from a fall of only 32 inches (as opposed to the prosecution's estimate of 15 feet).

During a lengthy cross-examination, prosecutor Martha Coakley tried to refute Dr. Leestma's theories. Coakley asked Dr. Leestma about Matthew's retinal hemorrhages, which is a symptom of shaken baby syndrome. The doctor claimed that the hemorrhages did not change his opinion that the baby's injuries did not come from violent shaking. But, Dr. Leestma said, he had discovered no evidence suggesting the presence of retinal hemorrhaging prior to the alleged shaking incident.

Coakley also questioned Dr. Leestma's expertise in child abuse cases. The doctor admitted that as a neurologist, he has dealt mostly with the tissues of corpses, not living children, and that he is not an expert in biomechanics. Dr. Leestma also admitted to the prosecution that the facts of the Eappen case, as first presented to him, resembled a child abuse case.

Under careful prosecution questioning, Dr. Leestma insisted that he had seen and read about cases of children suffering head injuries similar to Matthew Eappen from falls of only three feet. However, the doctor could not specifically name these cases. Dr. Leestma also conceded that he had never seen or read about other cases where a child suffered retinal hemorrhages from a falls of two or three feet.

Dr. Leestma was scheduled to return the stand when testimony resumes Monday, Oct. 20.