KEY POINTS:
The crown says fingermarks around the chest of an injured toddler suggest she was "forcibly grasped", shaken and slammed onto a soft surface but the defence says the injuries came from an accidental fall.
How the 17-month-old girl received brain damage during a "time out" at the home of her mother's boyfriend is at the centre of an eight-day trial that began in Christchurch District Court today.
Trial Judge Colin Doherty, as well as the crown and defence, urged the jurors to set aside any feelings of sympathy or emotion because of the subject matter they would hear during the trial.
All said the jurors must judge the case dispassionately, solely on the evidence they would hear during the trial, including testimony from expert medical witnesses about childhood injuries.
"Don't go looking for your own answers outside the evidence you hear in this court," said the judge. "Don't research it on the internet. Google has no part to play in your task."
The 24-year-old Christchurch man denies alternative charges of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to the girl and causing the injuries with reckless disregard for her safety.
The crown plans to call 23 witnesses, including medical experts, concerning injuries the girl received when she had been placed in a bedroom at the man's house during a "time out".
The man, who was unemployed at the time, has interim name suppression. There are final orders for suppression on the names of the girl, her mother, and her grandmother.
Crown prosecutor Zannah Johnston said the girl had been admitted to Christchurch Hospital with a serious head injury. A scan showed she had a subdural haemorrhage - bleeding into the space between the brain and the skull. She was given emergency neurosurgery and when her condition stabilised the next day she was transferred to Starship Hospital in Auckland.
The jury would need to decide whether the injuries were deliberately inflicted or caused by an accident, and whether the accused caused them.
She said the little girl had been teething and was irritable and clingy with her mother and it appeared she was not bonding well with the mother's boyfriend of about three months.
On the day she was injured, the child had been placed in a bedroom at the boyfriend's home for a time out. The man had taken her in there and said that when he went back to check on her he found her unconscious on the floor.
The mother found him with the girl unconscious in his arms. The mother saw she was twitching and could not wake her. She called an ambulance.
The crown said it could only have been the man who caused the injury, and would establish a case of circumstantial evidence to show that the girl had been shaken very vigorously, or shaken and then slammed against a soft surface.
She had bruises to her forehead, an abrasion to her jaw, and bruises to her chest, upper body, back and legs.
A consultant paediatrician would give evidence of unusual fingermarks indicating she had been forcibly grasped around the chest. The crown would say that the injuries must have been caused while the man was alone in the bedroom with the baby.
Defence counsel Richard McGuire told the jury the defence would call expert medical evidence to say that the injuries could have been caused by a fall.
"It is quite possible that there was no crime here at all," he said. "Contrary to what the crown says, there is every possibility that this was an accident - a fall that through various circumstances led to a tragic outcome."
The girl's mother was the first witness, telling the court that her daughter was sometimes whiny and clingy, and had moments of "the terrible twos".
She said she had once tried smacking her on the thigh a few weeks before, but could not do it again after that.
She and the child had a very close relationship, and the toddler would sometimes cry when the mother showed affection towards her boyfriend.
- NZPA
