The N.C. Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday petitioned the N.C. Supreme Court to hear the case involving Mary Elizabeth Roach of High Point. Guilford County Superior Court Judge John O. Craig III set aside verdicts of first-degree murder and felonious child abuse that a jury returned against Roach after her 2007 trial. The N.C. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled last month that Craig was correct in ruling the state’s evidence was insufficient to establish Roach was responsible for inflicting the injuries that led to Hailey Rae Resch’s death on Nov. 9, 2005.
Since the Appeals Court ruling was unanimous, the state had to ask the high court to review the decision.
“This case is important to the jurisprudence of the State because it presents the unprecedented scenario of a trial court overturning a jury’s verdict of guilty in a first-degree murder,” Assistant Attorney General Anne M. Middleton wrote in the petition.
Middleton argued that the Appeals Court “failed to analyze all of the evidence” and “failed to allow the jury to decide whether the facts ... satisfied it beyond a reasonable doubt as to (Roach’s) guilt.” She argued the lower court didn’t consider evidence supporting the state’s theory that Roach, who was baby-sitting Hailey, attacked her in a fit of anger over the child’s misbehavior, slamming her head on a hard surface. Middleton argued that Hailey had “acute” purple bruises on her forehead and contusions of the scalp that were inflicted “within a few minutes to an hour or two” of her death.
“The evidence, both direct and circumstantial, supported a reasonable inference that (Roach) assaulted Hailey prior to lunch on 9 November 2005, and that Hailey died within two hours as a result of the assault,” she wrote. “The Court of Appeals erroneously weighed the evidence and resolved the evidence in the light most favorable to the defendant.”
pkimbrough@hpe.com | 888-3531
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