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BOSTON -- The state's highest court has reduced the first-degree murder conviction of a Cape Cod mother who confessed to smothering her 2-year-old daughter.
The Supreme Judicial Court says Erin Colleran was an otherwise doting mother who was in a profound depression when she attacked her daughter Skyler while she slept in their Sandwich home in 2001.
A Barnstable Superior Court jury rejected her insanity defense and convicted her of first-degree murder, finding the smothering premeditated and particularly cruel.
But the SJC said in its ruling Thursday that the "interests of justice" call for her conviction to be reduced to second-degree murder. The court also threw out her life sentence and sent the case back to a lower court for a new sentence.
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO92471/
The Supreme Judicial Court says Erin Colleran was an otherwise doting mother who was in a profound depression when she attacked her daughter Skyler while she slept in their Sandwich home in 2001.
A Barnstable Superior Court jury rejected her insanity defense and convicted her of first-degree murder, finding the smothering premeditated and particularly cruel.
But the SJC said in its ruling Thursday that the "interests of justice" call for her conviction to be reduced to second-degree murder. The court also threw out her life sentence and sent the case back to a lower court for a new sentence.
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO92471/