An appeals court in New York has upheld the conviction of a former Safford woman for killing her three newborn babies in the 1980s.
The court rejected arguments that the trial court allowed inadmissible statements Dianne Odell made to state police after requesting a lawyer.
The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court found that requests by Odell, 52, and her husband for an attorney were "equivocal," made before she was actually in custody, and that her statements to investigators about the mummified babies found in a Safford storage locker were "given freely."
"At the point that she became a suspect in New York, she was given proper constitutional warnings, which she knowingly and intelligently waived," Justice Bruce Crew III wrote. Four other justices concurred.
The babies' remains, wrapped in towels and blankets, were found in cardboard boxes in a Safford storage shed, about 80 miles northeast of Tucson, in May 2003. Odell and her family lived in Safford for about seven months during 1991 and 1992.
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Odell was found guilty of three counts of second-degree murder in Sullivan County Court in December 2003. She is serving 25 years to life imprisonment at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
Odell maintained she was not guilty.
The three infants died shortly after their births at Odell's home in Kauneonga Lake, about 80 miles north of New York City, between 1982 and 1985. She told police she passed out during delivery and awoke to find the babies dead.
According to police, Odell told them she'd heard the babies cry, indicating they were born alive. She did not testify.
The appeals court also rejected arguments that Judge Frank LaBuda shouldn't have allowed cameras in the courtroom and erred in allowing prosecution witness Dr. Michael Baden to offer an opinion on the cause and manner of the babies' deaths.
The appellate court noted that LaBuda "inappropriately" permitted Baden to opine that the deaths were "homicides," though they would find that error "harmless inasmuch as the expert defined the medical definition of homicide and stated that he was not drawing a legal conclusion in that regard, nor was he making a determination regarding any culpability."
