Father wrongly believed he killed baby

A Northland father spent a month in jail wrongly believing his actions caused the death of his five-month-old baby.

He missed the child's funeral after being first charged with assault and then murder.

The incident was ‘‘a tragedy for everyone involved'', Judge Duncan Harvey told the 29-year-old man as he discharged him without conviction in the Whanga¯ rei District Court yesterday.

Police launched a homicide investigation after the baby boy died in the Whanga¯ rei suburb of Raumanga in August 2019.

But in September, police dropped the murder charge against the man and charged a 31-year-old woman instead.

The woman, accused of murdering the baby with a showerhead, has a tentative trial date for February 2021.

The man, who has name suppression, delivered some blows to the baby's chest to stop him from crying, his lawyer Melissa Russell told the court yesterday.

When the baby died that night, he gave a tearful statement to police, leading to the charges against him, she explained.

‘‘The original charges came from the defendant's co-operation with police and his utter belief that what he had done had contributed to the death of his child.''

It was not until the post-mortem examination that it became apparent the man's actions in no way contributed to the child's death, Russell said.

The man spent a month in jail and missed the funeral of his baby, she said.

The judge said the man had been through a traumatic time.

‘‘I have no idea, honestly, how you feel,'' Judge Harvey said.

‘‘What you have been through is traumatic in the extreme. There has been, at no stage, any effort on your part to avoid what you did and what lies ahead of you, I suspect, is going to be just as traumatic as what goes before.''

The judge found there was very little, if any, malice in the man's actions.

‘‘You have spent a month in prison, that's enough,'' he said.