How toddler suffered injuries main issue in 3rd week of Regina murder trial

Crown prosecutors have closed their case in the voir dire portion of the Chelsea Whitby murder trial, which is now in its third week.

Crown attorneys Adam Breker and Aly Sparks presented evidence within a voir dire, a trial within a trial. In this case, the voir dire was held to determine the relevance of the Crown's evidence in establishing motive.

Chelsea Whitby, 27, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of her 18-month-old son Emerson, who died June 10, 2022. An autopsy showed the child died from a brain bleed caused by blunt-force trauma to the head.

The Crown argues that Whitby caused the trauma that led to her son's death, but Whitby has maintained that she doesn't know what caused her son's injuries.

How Emerson's condition became so dire so suddenly has been the main question in court the past two days.

"The injuries don't fit the story," an investigator said to Whitby during a previous interrogation. The Crown showed hours of interrogation footage between two police investigators and Whitby, during which she described how she remembers the morning in question.

Emerson was in bed. Whitby had been looking after Taylor's two girls, making them a snack, before getting them ready to visit their grandparents, she said in the video.

Earlier that morning, she had seen through a baby monitor that Emerson was wiggling in bed. Less than two hours later, she went to wake him, but he wasn't responding, she said. She tried to shake him, but he was still unresponsive, she told investigators.

Whitby panicked. She lifted the toddler out of his crib and rushed downstairs. Her then-boyfriend, Taylor Stewart, pulled up to the house at the same time, she said.

She told Stewart the situation and directed him to call 911, Whitby told investigators. He told her to give Emerson to him and for her to call instead.

During the hours-long questioning, investigators narrowed her story down: something drastic had to have happened to Emerson, within a brief period, in a room that Whitby says only she had entered, for him to have sustained the injuries that led to his death.

"I really don't know why my son is f—ing dead," Whitby said during the interrogation.

At one point, an investigator suggested Whitby wasn't being totally forthcoming to protect herself. Whitby denied that.

Investigators gave her multiple chances to confess to any potential wrongdoing, but Whitby reiterated that she didn't know what she could have done to hurt her son. Investigators even set up a makeshift demonstration with Emerson's mattress, part of his crib and a baby doll, so Whitby could walk them through her actions.

Near the end of the interrogation, she asked the investigators what they thought could have caused Emerson's injuries, seemingly to try to spark any recollection of her previous actions.

After further discussion, she wondered if her brain was stopping her from remembering the remaining piece of her story.

Doctor testifies

Dr. Juliet Soper, a pediatrician who worked in the Regina-Fort Qu'Appelle region from 2012 to 2021, testified in court Monday and Tuesday. Soper, who joined court virtually from New Zealand, took care of Emerson at the hospital on the day in question.

Emerson was in a deep coma when he arrived in the hospital, she said. He presented with fractures and about 20 bruises over his body — above average for a child his age — including some in obscure places, such as the ribs and crown of the head, that a toddler wouldn't often sustain by themselves.

He appeared to have developed normally and had no underlying condition that could have led to bruising, she said. Given how many bruises covered his body, there was likely more than one incident that caused them.

During cross-examination, Soper said that it's difficult to date a bruise and that the size and colour of one do not correlate to a more significant injury.

Defence attorney Darren Kraushaar asked Soper if she could quantify the amount of force needed for a bruise to form. She said she could not, because a study on the topic would be unethical because it would require harming children. She said her testimony was mostly based on her clinical experience, as well as a longitudinal study about bruises in children from the United Kingdom.

The judge-only trial, presided by Court of King's Bench Justice C.L. Dawson, will resume in Regina Friday.