PATHOLOGIST SAYS FIVE CHILDREN DIED OF DELIBERATE SUFFOCATION

[摘要] Testifying in the trial of a woman charged with killing her five young children, the chief forensic pathologist of the New York State Police said today that all five had been deliberately suffocated and were not, as was originally believed, victims of crib death.The case of Mrs. Hoyt, a 48-year-old housewife raised in this rural county, has drawn national attention because the deaths of her five children had been cited for two decades as textbook cases of so-called crib death, on sudden infant death syndrome.... Defense lawyers have declined to say whether Mrs. Hoyt will testify in her own defense.If she does, she will no doubt face questions from the prosecution about the confession she made and signed last spring. A police investigator has testified that in her statement, which she has since recanted, she voluntarily told him how she had suffocated each of her children: Eric, Molly, and Noah were smothered with pillows. Julie was pressed against her mother's chest until her breathing stopped. James–who was 2½ years old, the only child to survive past the age of 3 months–was suffocated with a bath towel.The prosecutor had quoted Mrs. Hoyt as saying she could not bear hen children's crying.The defense lawyer has argued that Mrs. Hoyt's confession was signed under duress–without a lawyer present, without benefit of her reading glasses, and without having been properly instructed of her rights.

[学科分类] 儿科学