Nanny’s lawyer says case made US system look bad

The lawyer who represented Aisling Brady McCarthy, the Irish nanny who spent 27 months in prison before charges against her of murdering a baby in Boston were dropped, has admitted the case made the US justice system look bad.

The 37-year-old Cavan native was accused of killing one-year old Rehma Sabir who she was minding in January 2013. The prosecution had alleged Rehma suffered injuries after being shaken, but two weeks ago, the charges were dropped when an earlier decision that the baby’s cause of death was homicide was reversed.

It was put to her lawyer Melinda Thompson on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme last night, that the US justice system did not come very well out of the saga. Ms Thompson replied: “It does not look good for the justice system. I could not explain what was going on [to Aisling and her family] because I had never seen anything like this. I was a prosecutor for a long time. I could not believe this was happening... things we should have been getting very easily (from the prosecution), we were having to go court to get.”