Baby murder trial of Irish nanny may be held next April

next year, according to records filed in a court in the state of Massachusetts in the United States.

Ms Brady McCarthy, who is originally from Co Cavan but has been living in the US for about 13 years, is charged with first-degree murder, assault and battery causing the death of one-year-old Rehma Sabir in January.

Ms Brady McCarthy (34), who lived in Quincy outside Boston, has pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to the death of the child two days after the baby was found unresponsive in the family home on January 14th. She has been detained without bail.

Trial date
At a short pre-trial hearing in the Middlesex County Superior Court in Woburn near Boston, the case was put back to a further hearing on August 14th. The trial against her has been provisionally set for April 7th, 2014. A hearing on discovery motions is scheduled for November 19th followed by a further hearing on December 10th before a final conference hearing before the trial begins. These dates are subject to change.

The dates leading to the trial in the case against Ms Brady McCarthy emerged as new court records showed that the prosecution handed over new records to her lawyers under the legal discovery process.

Prosecutors have given defence lawyers a Cambridge police report dated January 21st and a record of Ms Brady McCarthy’s booking record of the same date, the records show.

The district attorney has also handed over grand jury minutes dated February 21st and 26th, running to 139 pages and 114 pages, according to records filed at the courthouse in Woburn.

Police photographs
The defence has also received a state police "criminalistics file folder" dated April 23rd running to 116 pages and a DVD of state police photographs.

Ms Brady McCarthy was indicted on the first-degree murder charge by a grand jury last month before being arraigned at a hearing a week later where she tearfully pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Police called to the Sabir family home, an apartment in Cambridge, on January 14th after Rehma’s mother returned home from work, to find her daughter, who was in Ms Brady McCarthy’s care, unresponsive. She called the emergency services at 4.41pm.

Ms Brady McCarthy was arrested a week later and initially charged with assault and battery of the child before she was also charged with first-degree murder last month.