Murder defendant takes witness stand Woman denies shaking 21-month-old daughter to death

Woman denies shaking 21-month-old daughter to death

Author: Stephen Gurr Staff Writer

Jill Depaillat repeatedly denied harming her 21-monthold daughter as she looked earnestly at jurors who will be asked to decide whether she is guilty of murder.

After describing for the panel of 10 men and two women how the girl slipped from her grasp and fell down a flight of wood stairs on an April day in 2004, Depaillat anwerered a litany of questions from her attorney, B.J. Bernstein.

"Did you ever take Mia and throw her down?" Bernstein said. "Did you ever shake her violently? Did you ever stomp her? Did you ever punch her? Did you ever purposely throw her down the stairs?"

To each question, Depaillat answered in a quiet but emotional voice, "no" - more than a dozen times in all.

"She was not a problematic child," Depaillat said. "She had no problems."

"Did you murder Mia?" Bernstein asked.

"No, I did not," Depaillat answered.

Depaillat's sometimes tearful testimony marked the beginning of the defense's case, scheduled to continue Monday. A jury coud begin deliberations late Monday or Tuesday.

Prosecutors allege that injuries to the girl - including bleeding in the brain and retinal hemorraging - point to shaken baby syndrome. Depaillat, 41, who is free on $50,000 bond, faces life in prison if convicted of murder.

Depaillat told the jury she was standing at the top of the stairs in her home in the Brookwood Plantation subdivision with Mia in her right arm and her 16-month-old son Julian standing to her left.

"I bent down to pick up Julian and when I was picking him up she kind of flung forward," Depaillat told the jury. "I tried to hold onto her. The fall itself was just a few seconds. I remember her twisting and landing on her head and tumbling down the stairs."

No one else was in the house at the time the child was injured.

Depaillat refuted earlier testimony from witnesses who said she seemed unemotional at the time emergency responders came to her house. An ambulance driver testified that during the 20-minute ride to Scottish Rite Children's Hospital, Depaillat didn't look back from the front passenger seat or ask about her daughter's condition.

"I know they said I had no feeling about it, but I was looking back constantly, saying, 'Please, is she OK?'," Depaillat said.

She also denied that the family refused to allow a reenactment at the house to be videotaped, as a GBI investigator testified earlier.

"They had no video camera," she said. "They did not ask if they could videotape it. We allowed whatever they asked."

During her cross-examination of the defendant, Chief Assistant District Attorney Sandra Partridge asked Depaillat whether she was feeling any emotional stress at the time of the child's death.

"Not having any health insurance did not create stress?" Partridge said. "You don't think financial difficulties are stressful?" "Not for us," Depaillat said.

Pressed on what caused her stress, Depaillat could only say arguments with her ex-husband had been stressful.

"So you're just laid back, you never get stressed out?" Partridge said.

"I'm a pretty laid back person," she responded.

Among four character witnesses called by the defense was local pediatrician Dr. Karen Carroll, who worked with Depaillat briefly at Pediatric Associates of Johns Creek.

"Is her reputation good or bad?" Bernstein asked the doctor. "It's excellent," she replied.

"Would you believe her under oath?"

"Yes, definitely," Carroll said.

Dr. Laura Darrisaw, the GBI medical examiner who conducted the autopsy of Mia, testified that the injuries found, including damage to the intestines, could not have been caused by a fall down stairs.

But Jan Leestma, a Chicago neuropathologist employed as an expert for the defense, testified Friday that the scenario was plausible.

Leestma, who testified in 1997 for the defense of British au pair Louise Woodward in a Massachusetts case that garnered national headlines, acknowledged testifying in dozens of child death cases across the country.

Leestma told the jury that retinal hemorrages, thought by the doctors who examined the girl to be a sure sign of shaken baby syndrome, could be caused from other traumas, including a fall. He pointed to a controversial study that found such eye injuries in a boy who was involved in an accident.

"Things are not what they seem and it ain't necessarily so," Leestma said.

The retinal hemorrages, Leestma said, "are likely to be complications of other things going on," including increased pressure on the brain.

Leestma said the intestinal injuries could have happened if Depaillat grabbed at the girl as she fell.

"Can you exclude that the fall as described by Jill Depaillat did not occur?" Bernstein asked.

"No, I can't," Leestma said. "It all seems to match up and seems logical to me."

But after being told by Partridge during cross-examination that Depaillat had previously said she didn't grab the girl during the fall, Leestma said, "the abdominal injury - that's problematic for me."

Leestma also acknowledged that some of his views about the causes of retinal hemorraging were not widely held in the medical community.

"I would have a minority view," he said.

E-mail Stephen Gurr at stephengurr@forsythnews.com.