A new trial was granted by the Supreme Court of Georgia to a Columbus couple serving life in prison for the murder of their newborn daughter in 2008.
Albert and Ashley Debelbot were sentenced to life in prison in 2009 after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation determined Debelbot’s daughter, McKenzy, died of blunt force trauma.
The state’s highest court determined Friday the couple had received ineffective legal counsel during their initial trial and the justices unanimously agreed to overturn their conviction.
McKenzy was born on May 29, 2008, at Fort Benning’s Martin Army Community Hospital in Columbus and released the next afternoon, The Associated Press reported.
After the Debelbot family returned home with their newborn daughter, they found the baby had a lump on her head and brought her back to the Martin Army hospital. McKenzy died later that day and an autopsy by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found her cause of death to be blunt force trauma.
The Debelbots were the only ones supervising the child after her release from the hospital, and because the child was thought to be healthy when she left the hospital, both parents were charged with murder in 2009.
For years, the Debelbots sought a new trial because their lawyers alleged trial attorneys failed to call expert medical witnesses during their initial trial. New defense attorneys say experts would be able to show that McKenzy was born with a brain deformation.
According to the Ledger-Enquirer, the Georgia Innocence Project, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit’s public defender office have called experts to testify McKenzy’s injuries resulted from birth defects and difficult delivery.
Their appeal also noted that a trial prosecutor told the jury that “reasonable doubt” does not require the state to prove defendants guilty with 100 percent certainty.
“It does not mean to a mathematical certainty,” Assistant District Attorney Sadhana Dailey said. “Which means we don’t have to prove that 90 percent. You don’t have to be 90 percent sure. You don’t have to be 80 percent sure. You don’t have to be 51 percent sure.”
The high court said in its decision that the explanation was a “gross misstatement of the law,” and the failure of the Debelbot’s lawyers to object to that point proved the couple were denied effective counsel.
“We admonish lawyers not to confuse jurors by attempting to quantify a standard of proof that is not susceptible to quantification,” the court stated.
The court’s decision to overturn the Debelbots’ trial does not mean they are now free.
The case will be expected to be sent back to Muscogee Superior Court. “The plan at this point is to try it again,” District Attorney Julia Slater told the Ledger-Enquirer on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
