A jury that had been deliberating for four days at the Montreal courthouse acquitted a Lachine man in a case dating back five years in which he was charged with murdering his young daughter.
On Saturday morning, Kirk Ainsworth Howell, 41, was acquitted of the second-degree murder charge he had contested since 2012. Howell had always maintained his six-year-old daughter, Myriam Jean-Baptiste, died as a result of having fallen out of a bunk bed. Her condition worsened in the hours that followed and Howell called 911 when it was apparent she was in serious trouble. She died a few days after being brought to the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
The Crown’s case was based on a theory he had shaken her to death.
The girl died in 2008, but it took the prosecution almost four years to charge Howell.
Experts on brain injuries were called to testify for both sides, and defence lawyer Marie-Hélène Giroux argued in her closing arguments that not even the prosecution’s experts could rule out fully that the girl died as the result of a short fall. The defence also called a radiologist, a neuropathologist and a pathologist as witnesses.
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