Word: woodwards
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BOSTON: Louise Woodward versus the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Round 2: State prosecutors on Wednesday began the roller-coaster appeals process with an emergency request for the Supreme Judicial Court to overturn Judge Hiller Zobel's ruling which freed the British au pair. But Boston judge Ruth Abrams simply referred to a full appeals court...
...decision was not unexpected: To uphold the emergency appeal ? and send Woodward back to jail for killing baby Matthew Eappen ? the prosecution would have had to display a reason why this cannot go through the normal appeals process. Most legal experts couldn?t see one, and the judge seemed to concur. Even in a high profile case such as this, the wheels of justice spin slowly...
...events have no doubt spurred much of the debate in the state legislature. Jeffrey Curley's tragic kidnapping and murder inspired Governor A. Paul Cellucci and others to press particularly hard for death penalty legislation. Likewise, the somewhat dubious conviction of Louise Woodward for second-degree murder gave legislators pause over voting to allow the state to put an individual to death...
While these events have sparked a renewed discussion of the merits of the death penalty, neither court case should actually determine the outcome of the debate. It was widely rumored that several representatives changed their votes as a result of the "flawed" Woodward verdict. Well-informed debate, not current events, ought to inform the decisions our legislators make...
...Woodward the only person who could have injured baby Matthew? Could the baby's father or mother have been responsible for his death? And what about Matty's older brother Brendan, now 3? Could something have happened if the baby had been left alone with Brendan? NANCY RAFTERY Bathgate, Scotland