Mother Cleared

November 6, 2008 permalink

In the aftermath of the Goudge inquiry, criminal charges have been dropped against mother Anna Sokotnyuk in the death of her baby, Anastasia.

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Charge against mother dropped in infant's death

November 06, 2008, Betsy Powell, Courts Bureau

The Crown will not prosecute a Toronto woman charged three years ago with the death of her infant daughter.

Prosecutor Donna Armstrong told court the Crown feels it has no reasonable prospect of convicting Anna Sokotnyuk, 27, of second-degree murder. The decision was made after an independent review by experts in the wake Justice Stephen Goudge's inquiry probing pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario.

Armstrong said the experts couldn't agree on the cause of Anastasia's death with any "degree of certainty."

"She's gone through horror for the past three years," Sokotnyuk's lawyer, Robert Nuttall, said outside Superior Court. "To lose a three-month-old child and then to be charged with its death in a murder situation is unimaginably horrific."

Nuttall praised the Goudge inquiry and credited the withdrawal on the evolution of scientific theories relating to "shaken-baby deaths."

Sokotnyuk was charged in 2005 ten months after police received a 911 call about an nfant who had stopped breathing.

Source: Toronto Star