Judge rejects police statement made by dad accused of killing baby

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A man on trial for manslaughter in the death of his infant son told police he had thrown the child in his crib and then discovered him struggling to breathe, so he called an ambulance.

But Mathieu Moreau’s Jan. 21, 2020 police statement was not admitted into evidence at his trial earlier this month after a judge ruled she was not satisfied the statement was voluntary.

Moreau made the admission after spending nearly 11 hours in a police interview room, during which he asserted his right to remain silent 22 times, said King’s Bench Justice Sadie Bond in a written ruling issued last May.

A forensic psychologist testified at a pre-trial hearing that Moreau has an IQ in the lower sixth percentile, and that his difficulty processing information would affect his ability to withstand a police interrogation. The psychologist, an expert in the area of false confessions, said Moreau would be more likely than the average person to change his answers when pressured by police.

“In all the circumstances, I am left with a reasonable doubt about the voluntariness of Mr. Moreau’s statement,” Bond said. “I am not satisfied that the answers he gave to police questioning were voluntarily given by operation of Mr. Moreau’s free will and choice to speak.”

Moreau, 34, was arrested days after his three-month old son, Maven, was taken off life-support Jan. 15, 2020.

At trial, court was told the child’s mother, 26-year-old Evelyn Gillis, and Moreau had been dating just a matter of months before she became pregnant and the two moved in together. Maven was born a month premature on Oct. 17, 2019.

Gillis was out to dinner in Osborne Village when Moreau called her parents, then 911, to report their son was having trouble breathing in his crib in their Nassau Street apartment shortly after 9 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2020.

The defence and prosecution agree that Maven’s death from a brain injury was a homicide — an intentional act — but disagree about how his injuries occurred, though only Moreau and Gillis could have caused them.

In the month before his death, Maven was twice injured while alone in his father’s care, including the day before he was rushed to hospital, when he suffered puffy lip and bleeding to the inside of his mouth, Gillis previously testified.

During Moreau’s Jan. 21, 2020 police statement, investigators put a number of scenarios to him, and implied if he didn’t provide an explanation for Maven’s injuries, they would be left to conclude he was a “monster” who had intentionally hurt the child, Bond said.

“You have the ability to tell the story here,” an investigator told Moreau at one point. “If you choose not to, OK, then we write the narrative as we see it from what we’ve learned from our investigation.”

Late in the interview, an investigator suggested Moreau hurt the child in a “split second of anger.” Moreau nodded and said he “might have… dropped him in his crib.”

“I had too much force when I put him down in his crib,” Moreau said. “I was kind of just getting really stressed… I kind of just threw him… I don’t know if he hit his head, but obviously he must have hit his head.”

Bond said the police inducement to admit to a “moment of frustration” was “augmented” by references to what kind of prison sentence Moreau could expect if he had intentionally harmed the child.

“I find on the evidence that Mr. Moreau would have been particularly vulnerable to the psychological pressure exerted during the interview, including the implied inducement,” Bond said.

Crown and defence lawyers made their closing arguments in the case on March 22. Bond is expected to deliver her verdict late next month.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca