WOBURN, Mass. (AP) - A judge has reduced the second-degree murder conviction of a Massachusetts woman charged with violently shaking to death an infant in her care.
The Boston Globe reports that Judge Kenneth Fishman said in his decision to reduce the verdict to involuntary manslaughter that he could not permit the murder conviction to stand “in the presence of such highly contested and inconsistent evidence.”
Pallavi Macharla was convicted in May.
Prosecutors said the 44-year-old Macharla shook 6-month-old Ridhima Dhekane in March 2014 so violently her brain bled. Macharla was a physician in her native India who ran a daycare out of her Burlington home.
Fishman denied a defense motion to acquit Macharla but agreed there was no evidence that she intended to hurt the child.
Macharla will be resentenced next month.
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Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com
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