26/01/08 (UK):
Four Year Old Gives Evidence As Experts Disagree
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Faisal Younas, 35, was convicted after a Scottish jury found him guilty of shaking his seven-month-old daughter Alishba to death. During the case, experts on both sides gave conflicting evidence, but the evidence of a four year old boy proved crucial.
Unusually, the boy was interviewed on film by the trial judge, Lord Hardie, and there is little doubt that this evidence proved decisive.
Younas, of Pollokshields, Glasgow, was originally charged with murder, but the Crown later asked the jury to find him guilty of the lesser crime of culpable homicide (the Scots equivalent of manslaughter). The trial lasted nine weeks and the jury eventually returned a majority verdict of guilty.
The four year old's evidence had been filmed months before the trial and, faced with conflicting experts' evidence, it was perhaps understandable that the Prosecution relied heavily upon it.
As far as the experts were concerned, there was much disagreement. Neuropathologists called by the Crown said the brain injuries were caused by shaking. But an expert for the defence, who flew from the U.S, said he had never seen such injuries in a shaken-baby case. Another doctor for the defence suggested that an accidental fall from her cot 43 days before, which resulted in Alishba being taken to hospital with a fractured skull, could have impacted on her brain.
However the four year old boy who was in the room with Alishba when she was injured told the Judge that Younas had stormed into the living room, slapped Alishba in the face and head before punching her to the floor.
Younis is due to be sentenced later this month.
© X-Pro 2008
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