Mother guilty of manslaughter
Jury rejects murder charge for Rotorua woman who suffocated six-month-old son
ARotorua mother who suffocated her six-monthold son in the midst of a depressive episode has been found guilty of manslaughter. For the past week, Melody Ngawhika, 28, has been on trial on a charge of murder, relating to the suffocation of her son Elijah Abraham Ngawhika. He died on August 29 last year while the country was in Level 4 lockdown.
Yesterday, after just under 10 hours of deliberation, a jury of 11 unanimously found Ngawhika not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. Justice Pheroze presided over the trial.
Ngawhika’s lawyer, Fraser Wood, had advocated for an infanticide verdict, saying his client could not bear full responsibility for the death as she was unwell at the time.
Ngawhika stood in the dock with a support person as the verdict was
Jagose read out. She sat silently as Crown prosecutor Amanda Gordon and Wood delivered closing statements before the jury retired in the afternoon.
In her statement, Gordon ran over the facts of the case, which were
I suspect none of us
will truly understand why she did this. Melody doesn’t understand why she did this,
either. Ngawhika’s lawyer, Fraser Wood
generally agreed upon by the defence.
Those facts are that Elijah died as a result of asphyxiation after Ngawhika held him tightly against her shoulder until he suffocated.
She then fetched a duffle bag and wrapped him in blankets, but couldn’t bring herself to place him in the bag.
“But, ladies and gentlemen, she didn’t really know how to do that, and I think the reality is she couldn’t do that,” Gordon previously told the jury.
Ngawhika called the police the same night, saying “the voices told me to do it”. A police interview between Ngawhika and retired detective Jeff Alpe was played to the jury during the trial. In it, Ngawhika says she was watching television and was “freaking out” thinking demons were on it.
“All I remember hearing was it was part of a prophecy. I remember being called a Jezebel in my head,” she told the officer.
“I don’t kill kids, but I did that to my own son.”
It was also accepted by both Crown and defence that Ngawhika had mental-health issues at the time. The defence’s sole witness, Dr Peter Dean, told the jury she had an abusive background and showed signs of psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ngawhika told Dean in an interview that she saw demons and the Government was tapping her phone.
The Crown’s expert witness, Dr Jeremy Skipworth, reached a similar conclusion, saying Ngawhika had a “disturbed mind” at the time.
The cause of that disturbed mind became a key question for the jury.
While it was clear evidence pointed to Ngawhika being in mental distress, it must be proven that distress was the result of childbirth in order to meet the criteria for infanticide, Gordon told the jury.
Infanticide is defined as the killing of a child by its mother “where at the time of the offence the balance of her mind was disturbed, by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth”.
The infanticide law is 85 years old and has sat unamended on our statutes since it was introduced.
Whether Ngawhika’s disturbed mind could be attributed to childbirth six months earlier was “questionable”, Skipworth said.
“It’s clear the law and medicine do not match up on this matter,” Gordon said, referring to Skipworth’s evidence that mental-health issues were typically the result of multiple, often compiling factors. Gordon previously labelled the wording of the law “from another time”.
Gordon suggested there were other factors at play, including a person who sexually and physically abused Ngawhika, whose identity was suppressed, re-entering her life.
“I am not standing here advocating a particular verdict. I’m not saying you should find her guilty of murder,” Gordon submitted. “It is your job to consider the facts and evidence.”
Wood, in his statement to the jury, said it was clear her mind was disturbed as a result of childbirth.
“It was clear from the [police] interview we saw, she couldn’t really comprehend what she had done or why. She will never be able to get over or forgive herself for what she did. Regardless of the verdict, she will live with the consequences of what she’s done forever.”
Wood said prior to the death, Ngawhika was a “good mother”, with no evidence of abuse, a pantry full of food, and a genuine love for her two children.
“I suspect none of us will truly understand why she did this. Melody doesn’t understand why she did this, either.”
She will be sentenced next year.