WOBURN — The murder trial of Aisling Brady McCarthy, a nanny accused of fatally assaulting a 1-year-old in her care in 2013, has been postponed while the state’s medical examiner’s office conducts a full review of the medical evidence.
At a Middlesex Superior Court hearing Tuesday, McCarthy’s lawyers said the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is “reviewing the entire case,” including nine medical reports from outside specialists. The defense specialists have challenged the office’s finding that Rehma Sabir of Cambridge died from traumatic head injuries and that her death was a homicide.
Prosecutors say Sabir was in McCarthy’s exclusive care when she suffered her injuries, which included massive bleeding in her brain and the back of her eyes.
McCarthy’s lawyers have maintained she is innocent. They note that diagnoses of shaken baby syndrome have increasingly been called into question, and they say the baby had been sick much of her short life. They have also noted the child suffered bone fractures and compression fractures to her spine, weeks before her death, when she was not in McCarthy’s care.
On Tuesday, her lawyers credited the medical examiner’s office for taking the unusual step of conducting the review.
“It’s in everyone’s interest to allow [the office] as much time as they need to perform a full reconsideration of the case,” said David Meier, a lawyer for McCarthy.
The review will push back the trial, which had been scheduled to begin May 6. According to Meier, the medical examiner’s office will provide an estimate in the coming days on how long their review will take.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a Middlesex assistant district attorney, said prosecutors do not want to proceed with the trial until the medical examiner’s office completes its review. The district attorney’s office declined to comment further.
McCarthy’s defense team sent the medical reports, conducted by a range of specialists, to the medical examiner’s office earlier this month.
Meier said officials at the medical examiner’s office indicated that the review will be a “reconsideration of the entire case.” Officials at the medical examiner’s office declined to comment.
Last year, the office changed its ruling in the death of a 6-month-old boy in Malden after receiving more information about the family’s medical history. The office initially ruled that the infant died from shaking injuries to the head, and authorities charged his father with murder.
But medical specialists consulted by the father’s lawyer concluded that the infant had died of natural causes. The boy’s mother and grandmother have a rare genetic defect that makes them more susceptible to ruptures of arteries or veins, a history that the family did not know.
After genetic testing of the family and consultations with specialists, the medical examiner’s office changed its finding on the manner of death from homicide to “could not be determined.”
In September, prosecutors dropped charges against the boy’s father, Geoffrey Wilson.
McCarthy’s lawyers have cited the case as an example that other medical problems can mimic the symptoms of abusive head trauma and that specialists did not fully consider other possible causes of Sabir’s death.
Alice Newton, a specialist in child abuse cases, determined that Nathan Wilson died from shaking injuries and made a similar determination with Rehma Sabir.
“The opinions expressed by Dr. Newton in the Wilson case are strikingly similar to those expressed by her in this case,’’ McCarthy’s lawyers wrote.
McCarthy’s lawyers have also asserted that the child was seen by specialists for gastrointestinal problems, failure to gain weight, and a bleeding disorder.
In September, Newton defended her conclusion about how Sabir died, saying the 1-year-old had sustained massive brain trauma that was consistent with a violent shaking injury in the hours before she was rushed to the hospital. Investigators also found blood stains on a pillow and blanket in the infant’s crib.
“These are injuries that happened at the hand of an adult,” Newton said in September, saying Sabir had been a “healthy, normal child.”
Melinda Thompson, a lawyer for McCarthy, said the nine defense specialists “all say this was not a homicide,” a finding she hopes will prompt the medical examiner’s office to reconsider its initial decision.
In light of the delay to the trial, McCarthy’s lawyers said they will seek to have her released on bail at a hearing next week.
A native of Ireland, McCarthy has been living in the country illegally, and the judge asked prosecutors to consult immigration officials to see whether she could be released with a monitoring bracelet while awaiting trial.
As soon as bail was mentioned, McCarthy began to cry.
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @globepete.