(AUSTRALIA)
Maitland Mercury [Maitland, NSW, Australia]
August 23, 2024
By Rex Martinich
Prosecutors in the trial of 14 people accused of killing an eight-year-old girl by withholding her diabetes medication have completed presenting evidence after nearly seven weeks of hearings.
Elizabeth Rose Struhs died on January 7, 2022 while lying comatose on a mattress on the floor of her family’s home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.
She had gone six days without her prescribed multiple daily injections of insulin for her type-1 diabetes, which left her suffering from vomiting and unquenchable thirst.
The defendants charged over Elizabeth’s death, including both her parents, are members of a small religious congregation known as ‘The Saints’.
All 14 defendants are self-represented and have refused to enter pleas.
Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco on Friday told Justice Martin Burns the prosecution had finished presenting its case to the judge-only Supreme Court trial that started early in July.
“The trial has reached the point where no more evidence can be led by the Crown,” Justice Burns told the defendants.
Justice Burns has previously heard in police interviews and intercepted communications between the defendants that The Saints rejected modern medicine and said they believed God would heal Elizabeth’s diabetes.
Justice Burns said the next phase of the trial would focus on legal issues such as which evidence was admissible against which defendant.
One of the final exhibits tendered by the prosecution was an audio recording of the November 2022 committal hearing for defendant Therese Maria Stevens, 37, charged with the manslaughter of Elizabeth.
“We loved Elizabeth and did not kill her … Our belief is in God. God being supernatural, we expected supernatural things to happen,” Stevens said.
Stevens was responding to her original charge of murder, which she described as “false”.
“The next step, logically, is to decide whether the rule taken from a case called Tripodi applies. That’s an important question because it has the potential to broaden the evidence admissible against all of you,” Justice Burns said.
The Tripodi rule determines whether anything said, done or written by one of the defendants in furtherance of an alleged common criminal purpose is admissible in evidence against the other defendants.
Justice Burns said the Tripodi issue needed to be settled before the defendants could decide whether to call evidence or take the stand in their own defence.
Elizabeth’s father, Jason Richard Struhs, 52, is charged with murder on the basis he allegedly acted with reckless indifference to life when they stopped Elizabeth’s insulin, while her mother Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs, 49, is charged with manslaughter.
Brendan Luke Stevens, the 62-year-old leader of The Saints is also charged with Elizabeth’s murder.
The other defendants are: Loretta Mary Stevens, 67, Andrea Louise Stevens, 34, Acacia Naree Stevens, 31, Camellia Claire Stevens, 28, Keita Courtney Martin, 22, Lachlan Stuart Schoenfisch, 34, Samantha Emily Crouch, 26, Zachary Alan Struhs, 21, Sebastian James Stevens, 23, and Alexander Francis Stevens, 26.
Justice Burns ordered the trial adjourned until August 29 to allow the prosecutors to prepare their submissions and defendants to read them.
Australian Associated Press