Louise Woodward Case - Aftermath

Aftermath

On returning home Woodward gave a press conference, which was broadcast live in the UK and Boston. She said that she would be giving an interview to the BBC, for no money, and wanted to return to her life. The interview was conducted by Martin Bashir in a special edition of the flagship BBC programme Panorama, in which she maintained her innocence.

The parents of Matthew Eappen filed a civil lawsuit to prevent Woodward from earning any profits from selling her story. Woodward lost the lawsuit by default as her legal costs were no longer covered by the nanny agency.

Louise Woodward studied law at London South Bank University, where she graduated with a 2:2 (Hons) degree in July 2002. In 2004 she began a training contract (the two-year training at an accredited firm that aspiring solicitors must serve) with the law firm Ainley North Halliwell, in Oldham, Greater Manchester. However, she dropped out of her training contract the following year in order to pursue a career as a ballroom and Latin dance teacher in Chester.

In 2007, Woodward was named the "most notorious criminal convicted in Massachusetts" by Boston law magazine Exhibit A.

The conviction had a side effect on defeating legislation in Massachusetts to restore capital punishment.

Patrick Barnes, a pediatric radiologist at Stanford University, was a key prosecution witness in the trial, but in 2011 he declared that he wouldn't give the same testimony today. He said there's been a revolution in the understanding of head injuries in the past decade, partly due to advances in MRI brain scanning technology: "We started realizing there were a number of medical conditions that can affect a baby's brain and look like the findings that we used to attribute to shaken baby syndrome or child abuse".