AUSSIE MUM ON DEATH ROW
Is an Aussie mum guilty of killing her 7-year-old stepdaughter?
Australian mum Lisa Cunningham sits alone in a cell inside Arizona’s toughest women’s prison. She is charged with the alleged murder of her 7-year-old stepdaughter, Sanaa, and is facing the death penalty. If found guilty, Cunningham could become the first Australian woman in US history to be executed.
It’s one of the most perplexing murder cases in recent times and has the potential, some say, to damage Australian-us relations. Did Adelaideborn Lisa, 43 – and her American husband, Germayne, 39 – kill Sanaa?
Speaking for the first time since she and Germayne were charged with murdering Sanaa, Lisa claims she did not kill her stepdaughter. “There was no murder, there was no homicide,” she told Seven Network’s Sunday Night from the maximum-security Estrella Women’s Jail. “She died from pneumonia.”
Sanaa died on Feb. 12, 2017, with an autopsy finding her cause of death to be sepsis, possibly the result of acute bronchitis or her wounds. Prosecutors allege Lisa and Germayne neglected Sanaa, placing her in a straightjacket and restraining her with zip ties. They also allege a bone-deep cut on her foot was not properly treated.
Lisa denies Sanaa was zip-tied and says Sanaa was prescribed highly potent drugs to treat her acute schizophrenia that put the 7-year-old to sleep for up to 20 hours a day. “[ This is] certainly one of the worst cases of miscarriage of justice that I have experienced in my practice,” Lisa’s lawyer, Eric Kessler, told Sunday Night.
Life for the Cunninghams – Lisa, Germayne and their six children – took a turn in 2016, when Sanaa was
diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. “We watched her change from a perfectly normal, vibrant 6-year-old” to a child who forgot “how to do basic tasks like turn a door knob or open a water bottle, and we couldn’t understand what was happening with her cognition,” Lisa said.
The Phoenix, Arizona, family was struggling to deal with Sanaa’s behaviour, which included tearing at her skin. The Cunninghams bought her eye goggles to wear at night to stop Sanaa from gouging her eyes.
“Sanaa would urinate and defecate on the floor, she would do it in her bedroom, she would do it in her bed,” Kessler told Sunday Night. “She would do it wherever she could and then she would smear it.”
In early 2017, Lisa was at her wit’s end; she could see her stepdaughter was showing no signs of improvement. “We were jumping up and down saying something’s wrong,” Lisa told Sunday Night. “Her quality of life is changing, her behaviour is changing, her personality is changing.”
A psychiatrist prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal ,which caused Sanaa to become “zombie-like”, Lisa says.
Kessler says that, according medical records, the doctor “didn’t personally evaluate the child”.
At this point, authorities were aware of Sanaa and her health struggles. Lisa claims the state of Arizona was in their house “for 10 months”. “They called the doctors, they knew what was going on, they supported us, ‘Keep going, Lisa, don’t give up, find treatment, find the right doctor, it’s going to happen, you guys are going to bring this little girl back.’ ”
On Feb. 10, 2017, Lisa noticed Sanaa appeared to be coming down with the flu. At 1am on Feb. 12, Lisa discovered Sanaa unconscious in her bed and rushed her to hospital. But five hours later she was dead.
Quacy Smith, the lawyer for Sanaa’s biological mother, Sylvia Norwood, and a former police officer, believes there is a strong case against Lisa and Germayne. “I bet my right arm there is enough to convict them of something,” he told Sunday Night.
Arizona is one of the 31 states in the US that has capital punishment. The last execution was of Joseph Rudolph Wood, in 2014, by lethal injection, which was widely described as “botched”.
Kessler maintains his client is innocent. “Lisa is not a criminal, she’s a good mother,” he told Sunday Night. The trial is set for July, 2020.
By Stephen Downie