Supreme Court overturns Great Falls woman’s conviction in infant death

HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a Great Falls woman’s conviction for assaulting her infant daughter saying her confession was involuntary because she believed she was providing information to help doctors treat her dying daughter.

Jasmine Eskew was acquitted of deliberate homicide in her daughter’s September 2012 death, but was convicted of assault on a minor. She was sentenced to five years under the supervision of the Department of Corrections and is currently being held at a prerelease center in Billings.

The District Court was wrong to deny a motion to suppress Eskew’s confession, Chief Justice Mike McGrath wrote in the 5-2 opinion. The lower court case was heard by Dirk Sandefur, who is now a member of the Supreme Court. He was not involved in hearing the appeal.

“We believe that she is innocent of this charge and the Supreme Court gives her a chance to prove that,” chief appellate defender Chad Wright said Tuesday.

Eskew, then 21, called 911 on Sept. 18, 2012 to report her 6-month-old daughter Brooklynn was unresponsive and not breathing. She had a head injury.

After they arrived at the hospital, officers took Eskew to the police station to question her.

In ruling on the pre-trial motion to suppress, Sandefur found that officers lied in telling Eskew her responses to their questions could determine whether her daughter would get proper medical treatment and by telling her she would be reunited with her daughter once the interrogation was over. The judge also found Eskew did not understand that the officers were questioning her in order to charge her with a crime. Still, he denied the motion to suppress.

At trial, prosecutors relied heavily on Eskew’s admission, after nearly four hours of interrogation, that she shook her daughter.

An autopsy determined the girl died of a blow to the head that fractured her skull. Sandefur excluded expert testimony about the type of circumstances that lead to false confessions, calling it a “novel” science.

“We know what happened here because her confession to shaking the baby didn’t match up to any of the physical evidence,” Wright said.

The defense argued Eskew’s boyfriend at the time was responsible for the girl’s injuries. He testified to seeing Eskew hurt her daughter, but Eskew’s appeal noted several ways in which his testimony was not credible.

In their ruling, the justices found that the officers downplayed the ramifications of signing the Miranda advisory, lied about the reason for the questioning and imposed extreme psychological pressure on Eskew to agree with their descriptions of what happened.

“This purposeful manipulation broke down Eskew’s ability to resist the officer’s relentless pressure to tell them what they wanted to hear — that she shook her daughter,” McGrath wrote. “When she relented and gave them what they wanted she was not reunited with her daughter, but was arrested.”

Brooklynn died Sept. 20, 2012 at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane, Washington, while her mother was in jail.

Justice Laurie McKinnon and Judge Heidi Ulbricht, who sat in for Justice Patricia Cotter, said they would have allowed the confession and addressed another issue of the appeal — whether Sandefur was wrong to exclude expert testimony about false confessions.