Dad convicted of killing 4-month-old daughter freed before retrial (Glasgow, Scotland)

Basically CRAIG JAMIESON is but another one of your garden-variety unemployed chaps drafted into baby tending--with the usual disastrous results. Seems he got "frustrated" or something and smacked the baby's head against something hard, which resulted in an ultimately fatal skull fracture. And then there were severe abdominal injuries, too. Nevertheless, Daddy has persisted in blaming the mum, though she was attending university classes at the time.

I'm not sure I understand why this fellow is getting a retrial. The reasons sound pretty specious to me.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/father-convicted-of-killing-baby-freed-before-retrial-1.1085815

Father convicted of killing baby freed before retrial

Craig Jamieson had tried to blame Abbie’s mother, Nichola Haddock for the baby’s death.
Alison Campsie

17 Feb 2011

A father serving a life sentence for murdering his baby daughter was freed by appeal judges yesterday.

Craig Jamieson, 31, who was ordered to serve 16 years in prison following the death of his four-month old daughter Abbie, is to face a fresh trial after the Court of Appeal heard criticism of the way the jury was directed by the trial judge, Alastair Stewart, QC.

Lord Osborne, sitting with Lord Eassie and Lord Nimmo Smith decided the conviction could not stand – but ordered that Jamieson should face trial again.

Abbie died in Glasgow’s Yorkhill Hospital in February 2008. A trial heard she had suffered a fractured skull and severe injuries to her abdomen.

Unnemployed Jamieson denied he was responsible but in April last year a jury found him guilty of inflicting blunt force injury “by means unknown” at his then home in Dumbarton Road, Glasgow.

He had lodged a special defence of incrimination against the baby’s mother, Nichola Haddock, 30.
Abbie had no pulse, no circulation and was unconscious and not breathing when admitted to Yorkhill.

Medical experts told the court that her injuries were likely to have been caused by her being hit off a hard surface like a wall or a worktop.

Prosecutors claimed Abbie was uninjured when her mother left for university after 7am on the day the baby died.

Jamieson, now of Drumchapel, claimed in court that he had fed the baby as normal that morning, but phoned his partner and his mother to tell them that she had gone white, was feverish and had injuries to her face and head.

The baby’s life support machine was eventually switched off.

After yesterday’s decision to overturn Jamieson’s conviction, defence QC Ronnie Watson asked for his client to be released on bail to await his new trial.

The appeal judges agreed, ordering Jamieson to stay away from Ms Haddock and not to try to contact her in any way.

It is understood that Ms Haddock, who was studying for a BA in child care and social work at Glasgow Caledonian University at the time of her daughter’s death, has returned to her native city of Belfast.

She had been banned by a bail order from meeting up with Jamieson, but the court heard that she conceived his second daughter around the first anniversary of Abbie’s death.