Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE -- A North Providence woman convicted of second-degree murder in the death of her newborn will not receive a new trial, Superior Court Judge Robert Krause ruled Wednesday morning.

Krause, sitting as the 13th juror in the case, rejected the arguments of Julie Robat's lawyer and scheduled the defendant's sentencing for Sept. 15.

The determination that Robat's baby was a homicide victim, even though prosecutors could not explain exactly how the newborn died from asphyxiation, was a major focus of the defendant's lawyer, Stefanie DiMaio-Larivee.

In its closing argument of the case, the prosecution outlined three different scenarios for how Robat committed second-degree murder, saying that she either neglected her newborn to the point that the baby died from asphyxiation by exposure, that she asphyxiated the baby inside a plastic bag, or that she asphyxiated the baby by holding it tightly.

DiMaio-Larivee asked how the jury can return a truly unanimous verdict without choosing a particular scenario and without any clarification from the court as to whether it was the defendant's inaction, or her actions, that killed her child. The lawyer called the scenarios "fictional."

"How can your honor sit as the 13th juror and agree when we don't know which theory they were buying into," DiMaio-Larivee said, adding that the defense could have posited its own scenario: that Robat passed out after giving birth in her family's bathroom and during this period of unconsciousness, her unattended baby died from asphyxiation.

"There's many things that could be said," DiMaio-Larivee said. "It's all medical conjecture."

"We ask that you look at the evidence and grant Julie a new trial based on sound evidence and not on speculation," she said.

The baby, Angelica Robat, was found inside a plastic bag that was underneath a laundry appliance in the family's home in 2006.

DiMaio-Larivee asserted that no testimony from any of the expert witnesses in the case, including the Rhode Island medical examiner, showed the baby was alive when it was placed in the bag.

Citing passages of law, she argued that the medical examiner's ruling of homicide must be made with a "reasonable degree of certainty" and she attacked various pieces of Gilson's testimony, saying that his remarks raise legitimate questions about his rulings in the case.

"Deep down," she said, "they just don't know. The medical examiner doesn't know."
Assistant Attorney General Molly Cote declined to reargue the case, although she said the baby's asphyxia could have been caused by hypothermia or a blocked airway.

"The defendant failed to do anything to help her child," she said. The case, like many other murder cases, is based on circumstantial evidence, she said.

In siding with the jury's verdict, Krause did not specify exactly how Robat is responsible for killing the baby.

He noted that her sisters had testified that she wanted to be alone in the bathroom and later in the laundry room. He cited testimony that showed Robat's unwillingness to seek medical care and to let doctors know she had given birth on that night.

Based on "credible medical evidence," the woman's baby was born alive and healthy, he said. He contrasted the tone of Gilson's testimony with that of a defense witness, an obstetrician.

The doctor talked extensively about his career before he gave testimony that ran counter to the medical examiner's ruling, saying the baby had died shortly after birth from a placental problem, not from an act of homicide. The jury was justified to doubt him, Krause said.

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