MA - Khyle Truong, 13 mos, found dead in his Worcester home, 30 Nov 2008

Worcester (AP) -- A Worcester teenager charged with suffocating her 1-year-old son with a teddy bear was ordered held without bail at her Superior Court arraignment.

Seventeen-year-old Nga Truong pleaded innocent to a murder charge Tuesday in Worcester Superior Court.

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wfgodot said:

And her mother--31--had her when the mom was 15. Jeesh.

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Charges dropped against mother who admitted suffocating baby

The charge against the now 19-year-old Ms. Truong was dropped by Senior First Assistant District Attorney Daniel J. Bennett this morning after a Feb. 25 ruling by Judge Janet Kenton-Walker suppressing Ms. Truong's alleged confession...


Judge Kenton-Walker found that Ms. Truong's statements to Detectives Kevin Pageau and John Doherty were not made voluntarily and that investigators did not offer her a “genuine opportunity,” as required by law, to consult with a parent, interested adult or lawyer about her right to remain silent before she spoke with police...

The judge also found that the detectives resorted to “deception regarding medical evidence” during the course of their interrogation and continually told Ms. Truong “that she was just a juvenile and if she would admit what she did she would remain in the juvenile court where she could get help.”

“When, as here, there exists a combination of trickery and implied promises, together with Nga's young age, lack of experience and sophistication, her emotional state, as well as the aggressive nature of the interrogation, the totality of the circumstances suggests a situation potentially coercive to the point of making an innocent person confess to a crime,” the judge wrote

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Back in the interrogation room, Sgt. Kevin Pageau presses in on the sobbing teenager.

"Somebody hurt that baby, and we need to know who it was, and we're going to find out who it was," Pageau says.

"I'm telling you everything," Truong replies.

"No you're not. Stop. Don't lie to me," Pageau says.

In that room, Truong will admit to suffocating her son. She'll be arrested and she'll spend almost three years awaiting trial for murder. But a videotape that police made of that interrogation, which NPR member station WBUR fought in court to obtain, will eventually set her free.

That videotape provides a rare look into the interrogation room, and the potential power it gives detectives to coerce false confessions.

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A judge ruled the confession was the product of deception and implied promises to “a frightened, meek, emotionally compromised teenager who never understood the implications of her statements.”

Through her lawyers, Truong filed a civil rights suit last December, alleging malicious prosecution, violation of her Miranda rights and false arrest. Now the city of Worcester is trying to make Truong’s trial lawyer, Edward Ryan, the defendant.

“Their complaint is absurd,” Ryan said. “This is a desperate attempt to apparently try to cast the blame for themselves onto me. And there is simply no factual basis for it and no legal basis for it.”

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In a twist to an already outrageous story, Ed Ryan, the lawyer for a young woman who spent nearly three years in jail after it was determined she was coerced into saying that she smothered her infant child, is now being sued by the city that wrongfully imprisoned his client, the Worcester Telegram reported Wednesday.

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A judge later ruled that the police had engaged in a pattern of deliberate lies, threats and promises to coerce that confession. The judge reached that conclusion as the result of efforts by Truong’s attorney, Ed Ryan. He had filed a motion to suppress the confession and without that confession, the district attorney had no case. So Truong went free after spending almost three years in jail...

But Reinstein is also defending Ryan, Truong’s defense lawyer, because the city now claims Ryan engaged in malpractice. It says he took too much time to prove the city had coerced the confession.

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The city will pay $2.1 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Police Department and the officers accused of coercing a confession from a young mother charged in 2008 with suffocating her 13-month-old son.

The criminal case against Nga Truong, who was 16 at the time of the child's death, was dropped in 2011 after a judge suppressed Ms. Truong's statements to police.

Ms. Truong sued the city in 2012.

In a statement, the city said it would pay the money over three years.

"All parties are prohibited from commenting beyond confirming that the case has been settled, as per the terms of the settlement agreement," the statement said. Ms. Truong's lawyer, Edward P. Ryan Jr., could not immediately be reached Thursday afternoon.

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