Mother testifies she didn't shake daughter

Author: Dennis Cassano; Staff Writer

Janet Ostlund took the witness stand Tuesday to deny that she shook her 2-year-old daughter to death last July, and a forensic pathologist and a pediatric neurologist added their testimony to that of four other medical experts who said the child died after falling from a couch.

Ostlund, 33, cried as she responded to questions from her attorney, Steve Meshbesher. When he asked why she and her husband named their adopted daughter Maria, she paused, put her fingertips to her forehead, began crying and said, "She was so cute and pretty, she just looked like a Maria."

On the day Maria was injured, Ostlund said, she was standing on a chair in her Robbinsdale home, hanging a heavy plant, when she noticed Maria standing on a couch. She said she told her to sit down, and Maria did. Then Maria sat on the arm of the couch and Ostlund again told her to sit down, and she did, Ostlund said.

Then from the corner of her eye she saw Maria standing on the backrest of the couch and told her to get down and turned her back to her, then heard a thud. "I looked and saw her on the kitchen floor and I flew off the kitchen chair and picked her up," Ostlund said.

Assistant County Attorney John Brink asked her under cross-examination why she didn't go over to her and take her off the couch. She said she was standing on a chair, hanging a heavy plant from the ceiling. "I was firm with her and I said, `Maria, get down.' I never in a million years thought she would fall off the couch."

Brink tried to draw a mental picture for the jury of a woman, eight months pregnant, who had had a long day running her day-care center, who was frustrated because her kitchen was being remodeled, who had been upset about a soiled rug, had an argument with her husband, David, and who had become so angry with Maria for standing on the couch and reaching for a collection of miniatures that she shook her violently.

But it was her lawyer, Meshbesher, who asked the pointed questions: "Did you kill Maria for playing with the miniatures?"

"No, I didn't," she said.

"Did you blow up at her and run over and shake her for playing with the miniatures?"

"No, I didn't," Ostlund said.

She denied allegations made by friends and relatives who said that at times she had fed Maria food that was too hot, slapped her in the face and carried her by one arm. Brink presented the allegations in an attempt to show that Ostlund had mistreated her daughter before she died. When Brink asked her if those witnesses were lying under oath just to get her in trouble, she either said yes or that he would "have to ask them."

The strongest testimony in her defense in the weeklong second-degree murder trial came yesterday from Dr. John Plunkett, the coroner for Scott, Dakota and Chisago counties and a former deputy medical examiner for Hennepin County, and from Dr. Gerald Slater, a pediatric neurologist at Hennepin County Medical Center.

They testified that the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, Dr. Garry Peterson, and Dr. Lindsey Thomas, who did the autopsy, were wrong in concluding that the child was shaken so violently that her brain was damaged and she died.

When Brink asked Slater how much he was charging Ostlund for his consulting services, he said, "I'm so convinced of the innocence of this lady that I feel I'm doing a community service. I'm not sure what the bill will be."

If the child were shaken, he said, blood should have been seen with the naked eye low on the spinal cord, but there was none, he said. Thomas had testified that she found blood with a microscope on the neck portion of the spinal cord, but Slater said that was a meaningless finding.

Slater said the child's abnormally small head and a fall she experienced eight days earlier made her brain more susceptible to damage from a fall off the couch.

Plunkett severely criticized his former employer for the manner in which the investigation was conducted, the way the autopsy was performed and the way the death certificate was written - wrong the first time and wrong in a corrected version.

Citing medical points, he testified that there is no evidence that Maria's death was caused by shaking.

He would not even back down to the extent that other physicians who testified last week did. They said there was no medical evidence that she was shaken, but since they did not see what happened, it is possible she was shaken. Plunkett would not say it is possible.