Exclusive: An Australian mother accused of murdering her stepdaughter in the US has sensationally likened her case to that of Lindy Chamberlain and fears a “terrible miscarriage of justice”.
Lisa-Marie Cunningham, 47, from Adelaide, and her American husband Germayne Cunningham, 42, could be handed the death penalty if found guilty of abusing and neglecting his young daughter, Sanaa, who passed away at Phoenix Children’s Hospital in 2017.
Sanaa’s body was covered in 60 scars and more than 100 cuts and bruises when she presented at the hospital. She also had multiple ulcers and abscesses.
In a series of conversations with News Corp ahead of her trial, Cunningham said she identified with Ms Chamberlain, who was wrongfully convicted in one of Australia’s most publicised murder trials almost 40 years ago.
Ms Chamberlain spent three years in jail for her nine-week old daughter Azaria’s death until she was exonerated in 1987.
It was later ruled that a wild dingo had killed the child.
“My daughter was not killed by anyone,” Cunningham said in one of dozens of text messages sent from her Maricopa County Jail cell in Phoenix.
She claimed “the truth” of the matter in both her case and Ms Chamberlain’s, is that law enforcement agencies can “build a case where there is no case” and the person accused can become “buried beneath assumptions and speculation without any real evidence”.
“(Lindy) Chamberlain’s case on the murder of her child, a death turned into a murder,” she said.
“Obviously without malicious motive but, still, a terrible miscarriage of justice.
“Just because someone in a position of power says a crime occurred, doesn’t mean it did.
“My case is not based on the occurrence of a crime … it’s based on the state’s response (to) discovering they would be sued civilly for the wrongful death of Sanaa.”
READ LISA CUNNINGHAM’S PRISON TEXTS BELOW:
Prosecutors allege that the Cunninghams left the seven-year-old in a condition that led to her death, specifically by restraining her so that she couldn’t expel fluid from her lungs.
The defence has argued that the Cunninghams were overwhelmed by Sanaa’s behaviour, did everything they could to keep her from harming herself and her siblings, and received poor medical advice which proved fatal.
She had been diagnosed with behavioural and mental disorders including schizophrenia, for which she was prescribed the strong antipsychotic Risperidone.
The Cunninghams took her off the drug within a month, after she turned catatonic. She died two days later, one day before the psychiatrist who prescribed the drug could see her.
The coroner listed Sanaa’s manner of death as “undetermined”, rather than as “homicide”, in her autopsy report.
Cunningham, who has been in jail for three years awaiting trial after it was postponed due to the original Covid outbreak, said she would not plead guilty even if offered a deal that meant she “could walk out of this jail and away from this ordeal today”.
“I will stay and I will fight,” she said.
If found guilty, Cunningham, a former Phoenix prison officer, will be the first Australian woman in history to face the death penalty in America.
“This is a terrible place, people are treated terribly. People die here for exactly the same reasons the state claimed my child died,” she said.
“I knew the death penalty was encouraged here. But, like most people, I thought that you had to murder someone to get it. That is not true.”
The couple claims that a series of disturbing text messages allegedly exchanged between them – and described by prosecutors as incriminating – had been fabricated.
Court records allege that one text message sent from Cunningham to her husband in December 2016 described how Sanaa was “in the garage zip tied to the water container”.
“I spread eagle zip tied her,” the text continued, according to court papers.
“I just got her put there so the kids can sleep.”
Cunningham told News Corp that “there were no texts in my cell phone on … the date of Sanaa’s death, where myself, Germayne or anyone else discussed anyone ever being zip tied”.
“Whoever created the text message report obviously made errors,” she said.
Speaking with News Corp separately, Germayne Cunningham echoed his wife’s claims of a set up.
“There are many discrepancies with the phones among other important details regarding this case that are not public record that will explain everything,” he said.
“I’m still standing and believing that the truth will come out in its entirety”.
Cunningham has two children with her first husband, an American pilot.
Germayne Cunningham has two children from his first marriage, including Sanaa. The couple also has two children together.
The Cunninghams trial will not go ahead until at least next year.
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