NIAGARA COUNTY COURT
Judge orders separate trials for parents of dead baby
Published: November 07, 2009, 12:30 am
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LOCKPORT — The parents of a 13-month-old girl who died of a morphine overdose last year will be tried separately, Niagara County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III ordered Friday.
Nicholas A. Doxey and Sara E. Nigro, both 23, are charged with criminally negligent homicide in connection with the March 4, 2008, death of Sierra Marie Doxey.
The Lockport couple, who no longer live together, were indicted earlier this year after a lengthy probe into the death. The overdose occurred in the apartment the couple then shared on Garden Street.
Murphy told Assistant District Attorney Claudette S. Caldwell he wants to know at a Dec. 4 pretrial conference which defendant will be tried first. Caldwell declined to comment on that after court.
Defense attorneys asked for separate trials because of some accusatory statements Nigro made toward Doxey in the presence of a detective March 25, 2008, when they were told the results of toxicology tests on the baby’s body showed the morphine overdose.
Nigro told Doxey, “I can’t believe you did this” and, “You were supposed to be watching her,” according to the previous testimony of Detective Lt. Scott Seekins.
Murphy ruled that Nigro’s statements would be unduly prejudicial toward Doxey if the two were tried together. He said Nigro’s accusation that Doxey somehow caused Sierra’s death “may be said to evidence her own knowledge of defendant Doxey’s use of morphine.”
Murphy also ruled that Nigro’s statements were admissible.
“Or at least voluntary,” said Nigro’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Michele G. Bergevin. She said she still might challenge their use at trial.
Doxey’s lawyer, E. Earl Key, tried to present an angle for disallowing those statements and others. He questioned Seekins and Detective John Yotter about whether they had been told that Key was representing Doxey and Nigro before the March 25 interview.
The detectives both said they didn’t remember being told that. If they knew it and questioned the defendants without their lawyer present, anything the defendants said ought to be inadmissible, Key said after court.
Seekins said he recorded a conversation he had with Doxey on March 4 in Lockport Memorial Hospital, as doctors tried unsuccessfully to save Sierra. The recording, of which Doxey was unaware, doesn’t include everything that was said because the batteries in the digital recorder went dead, Seekins said.
The March 25 interview in the Garden Street apartment wasn’t recorded at all. Seekins said he forgot to turn the recorder on.
Yotter said he didn’t record the conversation he had with Doxey outside the hospital March 4.
Key said he thought recordings might show that the detectives knew he had been retained.
The hearing on Doxey’s statements was adjourned until Nov. 20 to give Key time to try to come up with other evidence on that point.
tprohaska@buffnews.com
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