Aisling Brady McCarthy, 37, was arrested in 2013 after a medical examiner claimed she had ‘violently shaken’ the one-year-old girl in her care to death.
Despite her pleas of innocence, she was charged with the murder of Rehma Sabir in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sentenced to life in prison.
After more than two years in jail, the charges were finally dropped against McCarthy last August when prosecutors agreed that the evidence against her did not add up. She was swiftly deported back to Ireland.
Prosecutors said that McCarthy claimed Rehma was sleeping for hours before her family called 911 when they couldn’t wake her up.
They reportedly later found a pillow, baby wipes and a dish towel stained with blood.
McCarthy’s lawyers argued that she is innocent and that Rehma had been injured weeks before, when McCarthy was nowhere near her, and was also an ill child who had a bleeding disorder.
‘Ms McCarthy was put in jail for two-and-a-half years over a crime that never occurred,’ her lawyer, Melinda Thompson, told the Globe, according to the Irish Times. ‘Not just a crime that she did not commit, but a crime that did not occur.’
Middlesex DA Ryan had announced in August last year that the murder charge was dropped because the medical examiner issued an amended ruling changing the manner of death from ‘homicide’ to ‘undetermined’.
Ryan said the medical examiner found Rehma had prior medical issues and may have had some type of undiagnosed disorder.
After her arrest in 2013, her defence attorney paid a $5,000 bond to the court so she could continue to build her case while free.
But when Middlesex prosecutors told the judge McCarthy’s visa had lapsed – she had been living illegally in the US for 13 years – and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement considered her a flight risk, bail jumped to $500,000.
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