Update: Sister says defendant told her of child's birth
2:15 PM Fri, Apr 03, 2009 | Permalink
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She says she did everything she could to help Julie Robat and didn't know about the birth until her sister told her about it at the hospital hours later. Now, prosecutors have called on 22-year-old Marie Robat to testify in her sister's murder trial, and lawyers are questioning everything she did to help Julie Robat in their family's Lori Drive home. In Superior Court Friday morning, she told Assistant Attorney General J. Patrick Youngs that she loves her sister very much. 
Journal photo/ Kathy Borchers
Julie Robat listens in court Friday.
"This is a tough spot you're in?," he asked. "Yes," she said, before her sister's lawyer, Paul J. DiMaio, could object to the question and Judge Robert D. Krause could sustain the objection. "You're worried about her, aren't you?," Youngs asked later. "Yes," she said. That acknowledgement came toward the end of the young woman's testimony on the second day of her sister's trial. Prosecutors claim that Julie Robat gave birth to a 6-pound baby in a bathroom of her family's home in late October, 2006, then killed the newborn by suffocating her. They say the baby was found inside a garbage bag that police later discovered underneath laundry appliances. Robat's lawyer argues that the baby could have died from any number of complications associated with a traumatic childbirth.
Marie Robat, a student at Rhode Island College who hopes to be a school teacher, has agreed to testify under a deal that grants her immunity if the information she provides to the court is truthful. Youngs has emphasized that the defendant never told her family members that she had just delivered a baby when they saw her bleeding and became so worried about her health that they eventually called for an ambulance. Thus, the defendant's sister is one of the witnesses he has called to the stand. With her mother watching anxiously from the rear of the courtroom, Marie Robat testified. During cross-examination, her sister's lawyer, DiMaio, examined variations in testimony she gave to the grand jury and testimony she has presented in Superior Court. On Thursday she testified that Julie Robat had seen her and their other sister, Christine, in the hospital and told them she had given birth to a baby, and the baby was dead. She had not given that information to the grand jury. Both lawyers asked her why she had not told anyone at the Woman & Infants Hospital about the baby as soon as her sister told her. "I was shocked," said the witness, "I didn't know how to react..." Testimony has concluded for the day. Christine Robat will be the next witness to testify when the trial resumes Monday. 
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