Couple Cleared of Charges after 12 Years for the Murder of Their Newborn Daughter

A couple accused of murdering their newborn daughter has been cleared of all charges after 12 years — they received an apology from the defense attorney.

A soldier couple who were incarcerated more than a decade ago for the alleged murder of their infant has been freed over blunders by their defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Their names are Ashley, 37, and Albert Debelbot, 35, and the case against them was formally dismissed on Tuesday after a prosecutor refused to retry them over the supposed crime.

The incident happened in May 2008 when the Debelbot's took their newborn baby McKenzy home two days after her birth. About 12 hours later, they woke up at midnight to discover a bump on her forehead which made them rush her back to the hospital.

The baby died a few hours later, and her parents were arrested the following day. The Debelbot's lawyers believe the baby's injuries were natural causes, and her parents were judged in a rush.

This ultimately cost them about twelve years of their lives; however, it all ended when a supreme court overturned the case in Georgia in February 2020.

Apparently, the then-prosecutor Sadhana Dailey had wrongly lowered the burden of proof beyond the reasonable doubt required to convict them.

He wants some sort of compensation from the state for the injustice.

This was frowned upon by the Supreme Court, and it led the new district attorney to decide it was not worth trying, therefore, earning the Debelbot's freedom.

In the same courtroom they were convicted over ten years ago, the couple received an apology from the new district attorney after the hearing. On the other hand, Dailey remains convinced that the couple had something to do with the child's death.

The liberated couple, who had been out on bond for more than five months, held a press conference after the hearing where they revealed their stances on the subject of their freedom.

Ashley, more composed, declared she was not bitter about the affair; however, her husband, angered, demanded justice. He wants some compensation from the state for the injustice of keeping him away from his wife for 12 years.

Though their case is pitiful, they are not the only ones who have suffered from rushed judgment. Last year, a man who spent almost three decades in jail for the murder of a 4-year-old girl was also freed.

His freedom was precipitated by the same District Attorney's Office that prosecuted him back when he was first arrested in 1988. The office's Conviction Integrity Unit, which was created in 2014, worked to disprove the case.