WOBURN – A Middlesex Superior Court judge ordered a bail hearing Thursday for an Irish nanny who was jailed more than a year ago on charges that she fatally beat a 1-year-old girl who was in her care in Cambridge.
Judge S. Jane Haggerty’s order came after defense lawyers for Aisling Brady McCarthy argued that prosecutors have failed to provide evidence that could exonerate their client.
McCarthy is facing a first- degree murder charge in an alleged assault on Rehma Sabir on Jan. 14, 2013, at the child’s home near Harvard Square. Rehma died two days later.
Prosecutors have said that McCarthy was the only person with the child when she suffered the fatal injuries.
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In a motion filed in court, defense lawyers demanded that prosecutors turn over all evidence they have about “recently disclosed expert medical opinions that certain prior violent injuries to Rehma Sabir, including violent compression fractures to 10 different thoracic vertebral bones, were inflicted during a time period when the child was traveling overseas in foreign countries and was not in the care or custody of Ms. McCarthy.”
The two defense lawyers, David E. Meier and Melinda L. Thompson said the previous injuries, which their motion said included injuries to four long extremity bones, occurred three to four weeks before the girl’s death. “It was a factual impossibility for Ms. McCarthy to have had access to her” at that time, they wrote.
They said the conclusions come from reports issued last month by medical specialists at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Miller School of Medicine in Miami.
Prosecutors said they were not prepared to make arguments against the motion. That will happen during the bail hearing, which the judge scheduled for Feb. 14.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.
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