Update: Robat guilty in her baby's killing, wants new trial
2:14 PM Fri, Apr 17, 2009 | Permalink
Email
 |
 |
Projo 7 to 7 News BlogTaking the news pulse of Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, by Providence Journal and projo.com staff, from 7 to 7, every business day |
|
Get the 7 to 7 on your mobile at www.projo.com. Twitter: projo | RSS | Email alerts
« R.I. 1 of only 3 states boasting steady employment |
Main
| E. Providence man pleads guilty to drug, gun charges »
Providence Journal photo / Kathy Borchers Julie Robat is handcuffed and lead away after the jury's verdict of guilty of second-degree murder.
By Mark Reynolds PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A North Providence woman accused of killing her newborn baby girl was found guilty Friday afternoon of second-degree murder. Julie Robat's lawyer, Paul DiMaio, said he will file a motion for a new trial. Robat, 33, of 6 Lori Drive, was taken away in shackles to the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston after the verdict was read. Earlier Friday, the jury of five women and seven men emerged from deliberations to ask Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause to clarify whether involuntary manslaughter committed with malice -- with intent and without just cause to perform a harmful act -- constituted second-degree murder. Krause instructed the jury that malice is not a requirement for involuntary manslaughter, but that the jury needed to find malice beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Robat of second-degree murder. "Involuntary manslaughter is a lesser offense than second-degree murder," Krause said, telling the jury, "Go back to work." On Wednesday, Krause dismissed a first-degree murder charge against Robat, saying prosecutors had not presented sufficient evidence to support the charge. Krause instructed the jury they were to consider if Robat was guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter. The jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon. North Providence police found the dead newborn, Angelica, stuffed inside a garbage bag in the laundry room of the Robat family's Lori Drive home on Oct. 30, 2006. The prosecution argued that Robat gave birth to a live baby in a bathroom, committed an act of homicide, hid the baby's body and lied to emergency personnel and doctors, telling them that she had never been pregnant or given birth. DiMaio, Robat's lawyer, told the jury that Robat passed out just before delivery. The baby, DiMaio said, died moments after it was born due to a medical complication involving the placenta, which supplies blood and oxygen to an unborn baby in the womb. DiMaio, citing expert witnesses, referred to Robat's vaginal bleeding in the months before her pregnancy, and her count of white blood cells and blood clots that expert witnesses had identified in the placenta. DiMaio also said prosecutors had awarded immunity to Robat's two sisters, Marie and Christine Robat, who, he said, would have been more able to hide the baby because Robat's bleeding at the time was life-threatening. "Who did it?" he asked. "The girls hid that body. One or both, I don't know. Why? I'm not sure." He accused the sisters of perjury, pointing to contradictions in some of their testimony, and doubting their account of how a laundry basket made its way from the bathroom to a downstairs laundry room. He noted that the North Providence police did not check the laundry basket for fingerprints. "There is a lot of reasonable doubt," DiMaio told the jurors. Assistant Attorney General Molly Cote began her arguments with a dramatic recording of the 911 telephone call that was made to emergency dispatchers as Robat apparently yelled in the background. "No! No. Please don't," Cote said, attributing the yelling to the defendant. Cote told the jury that the evidence points to three scenarios as to how Robat killed the baby. In the first scenario, she placed the baby girl in the garbage bag while the newborn was alive and suffocated her. In the second scenario, Robat left the baby on the floor to "struggle and die." In the third scenario, "probably the most likely," Cote said, Robat held the baby close to her body and so tightly that her baby suffocated. "It was reckless disregard for her daughter's life," Cote said. "It was malicious. It was murder." This entry was first posted at 7:37 a.m. and updated at 12:20 p.m. and 1:21 p.m.. 
CommentsLeave a commentPlease be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish. |
Tags 
New comments
New photos
New posts
Projo blogs
Archives
Morally, what's the difference between this woman and any late-term abortionist? There's no significant difference that I can see. May God bless the child's soul.
Report Abuse
We put down dogs and dispose of them more humanely than what this woman did to her child. Truly sickening!! I never believed her self defense story of not knowing she was pregnant. Maybe in the 1st trimester and possibly the beginning of the 2nd trimester, but please...with all the physical changes in your body not to mention feeling the baby move and kick...She belongs in prison. There were other options available; she didn't have to murder her daughter.
Report Abuse
How do any of you self-righteous SOB's REALLY know what went down in that bathroom? This woman lost her child and now she's going to prison. Imagine for a second that she might actually be innocent. Unless they had a video camera in the bathroom, how could the jury know what happened. They are GUESSING! This woman is going to jail for 2nd degree murder based on a jury's GUESS.
Report Abuse
dave you have to be kidding?
Report Abuse