Massachusetts Personal Injury News
Massachusetts Girl Won't Testify in Abuse Case
The notorious end-of-life case involving a girl who survived extreme physical abuse will not be called to testify against the man who hurt her, according to a notice filed. The girl was beat into a coma and her brain was injured by the assault.
Prosecutors met with Haleigh Poutre, 14, several times, spoke with her doctors and reviewed her medical and psychological records, which led them to the decision to not call her as a witness. State officials will not discuss Poutre’s condition, citing privacy laws and her recovery is unknown.
The notice was filed just one day before a scheduled hearing in Hampden Superior Court to decide if Poutre was mentally competent to be a witness.
“The Commonwealth has concluded that it would not be in the best interests of the child to testify in a public forum and has decided to forego the information she would have supplied rather than further traumatize the child,” stated Assistant District Attorney Laurel Brandt in a court filing.
According to authorities, Poutre was severely beaten in 2005 by Jason Strickland and his wife Holli, who was Poutre’s sister. The Stricklands had adopted Poutre when her birth mother gave up her parental rights.
The state gained custody of Poutre after she was hospitalized with a damaged brain stem that doctors said left her comatose. She became the center of a heart-rending legal case when the Department of Social Services wanted to remove her feeding tube, believing she had no hope of recovery.
Poutre improved enough to survive without a ventilator, which prompted an extensive evaluation of how the state handles right-to-die questions for children in its care. There was a lot of criticism saying that the state had moved too quickly in wanting to remove the feeding tube. Poutre’s case was key to a massive change of the state’s child welfare system, including the creation of a new Office of the Child Advocate.
Strickland is scheduled to go to trial on assault charges on October 29, 2008. He has pleaded not guilty. Holli Strickland died in a murder-suicide with her grandmother two weeks after she pleaded innocent to assault charges in September 2005.
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