Mother 'hit and strangled child in cot'

Sharon Anne Harrison-Taylor. Picture / Dean Purcell

A woman has gone on trial in the High Court at Auckland accused of the murder of one of her eight-month-old twin boys.

The Crown says that Sharon Anne Harrison-Taylor, 39, hit her son Gabriel a number of times before smothering and strangling him in his cot.

Initially, mother-of-five Harrison-Taylor maintained it was a case of cot death, but her defence has now shifted to one of infanticide.

The law says that where a woman kills a child at a time when the balance of her mind is disturbed from the effects of giving birth, she should not be held fully responsible for the killing.

She would be guilty of infanticide, not murder or manslaughter.

But the defence of infanticide has been rejected by the Crown, represented by Christine Gordon and Louise Freyer.

"This is simply a case of child abuse," Ms Gordon said in her opening address to the jury.

"The accused got angry with Gabriel. She lost her temper."

The Crown said that right from the word go, Harrison-Taylor adopted the theme that this was a tragic case of cot death.

Those were her first words to the 111 operator and something she repeated a number of times after.

Ms Gordon said that in a cold and calculating way she was setting up a defence for herself from the very start.

It was only now that the matter had come to trial that she had made a "180-degree" turn in her story and she was claiming a defence of infanticide.

"This is just a calculated, 11th-hour strategy.

"She has slowly realised that her claim of cot death was full of holes and simply would not stand up against the evidence to be called by the Crown.

"She has cast around for something else to use as an excuse, and this is what she has settled on."

Ms Gordon said that when an ambulance officer arrived at the Mt Wellington address in January last year, the child was already in a state of rigor mortis.

Harrison-Taylor claimed that she had checked the child a number of times after putting him down in his cot, the last time only 20 minutes before finding him not breathing.

Ms Gordon said that surprisingly, she telephoned her husband before calling for an ambulance.

Harrison-Taylor, she said, told the police that Gabriel was an active child, always rolling onto his stomach and pulling the blankets over his head.

Ms Gordon said this was another example of her pushing the cot death theme.

"She had her story and she was going to stick to it."

A doctor who was called would say he estimated that death occurred five hours before his examination.

Ms Gordon told the jury that they would also hear from pathologist Professor Rex Ferris, who would tell them that it was definitely not a case of cot death.

The child had fresh bruising on his forehead and extensive haemorrhaging to his neck as well as internal bruising.

Harrison-Taylor allegedly told officers that the forehead bruises were from a forceps delivery.

But Ms Gordon said the evidence would be that delivery was by caesarean section and that no forceps were used.

Harrison-Taylor became angry and indignant when it was put to her that her son had been dead for several hours.

When asked if she had any problems, she allegedly said that everything was fine and she did not suffer from post-natal depression.

Ms Gordon told the jury that Harrison-Taylor acted deliberately, hitting Gabriel a number of times and then killing him, probably by a combination of suffocation and strangulation.

"She kept her hands on him hard enough and long enough to stop him breathing.

"This was no momentary act, no momentary lashing out. She waited until she was sure he had stopped breathing.

"She knew what she had done ... she had four hours to craft a story for herself and she settled on cot death ... It seems at trial it will be different."

In a brief preliminary address, defence counsel Lorraine Smith told the jury that the defence was infanticide, as Harrison-Taylor was indeed suffering from the effect of giving birth to twins when she killed Gabriel.

The jury would also hear that she was suffering from a psychiatric disorder.

The trial, before Justice Ellen France, is set down for 2 1/2 weeks.