Burlington Babysitter Resentenced For 2014 Child Death

WOBURN, MA —Burlington daycare worker Pallavi Macharla was sentenced Friday to three and a half to four and a half years in prison, reported NBC10 Boston. Macharla was convicted of second-degree murder in May, but Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kenneth Fishman reduced the verdict in August, finding the evidence "inconsistent." Macharla was sentenced on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Pallavi Macharla tells Judge Kenneth Fishman she did not cause any harm to six month old child who died in her care. Judge sentences her to 3 and a half to 4 and a half years in state prison. #NBC10Boston
— John Moroney NBC10 Boston (@JohnNBCBoston) October" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/JohnNBCBos... 11, 2019

The case stems from the March 2014 death of a six-month-old baby Macharla was caring for. Macharla disputed having hit or shaken the baby. The Massachusetts Medical Examiner's office reversed an initial autopsy finding of "violently shaken" more than a year after their first autopsy, changing the cause of death to "undetermined." During Macharla's trial, medical examiner Anna McDonald testified she changed the cause of death after reading medical articles that contradicted her previous beliefs on the case. This case was the first autopsy McDonald performed in a case of suspected shaken baby syndrome.

Fishman said in August that conflicting medical theories presented during the four-week trial that ended in May made the second-degree murder verdict unsustainable, given "the presence of such highly contested and inconsistent evidence," and called the life sentence "not consonant with justice."