A fugitive mother accused of killing her newborn baby while on the run is no “monster”, her barrister has told jurors.
Wealthy aristocrat Constance Marten, 36, and her partner Mark Gordon, 49, are accused of the manslaughter of their daughter Victoria who died after they went off-grid on the South Downs.
The couple had fled authorities last January in at attempt to keep their newborn child after four other children were taken into care, the Old Bailey trial has heard.
Marten has claimed her daughter died by accident when she fell asleep holding her under her jacket the day after pitching a tent.
The prosecution suggest Victoria was exposed to cold wintry conditions with inadequate clothes for longer or was smothered.
In a closing speech on Wednesday, Marten’s barrister Francis FitzGibbon KC said: “What happened to Victoria was no crime but rather a terrible, tragic accident.”
He accused the prosecution of running the case against her in an “aggressive, bullish way”.
Their description of her as a “reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel and arrogant woman” was wrong, Mr FitzGibbon said.
He told jurors: “The way she has been characterised, it was almost vengeful in the way she was dealt with – as if they wanted to make you hate her or fill you with righteous anger so you would be more inclined to find her guilty. We say that is the wrong approach.”
Marten, he said, was far from being a “monster”.
Jurors have heard how the defendants fled with Victoria after their car burst into flames near Bolton, Greater Manchester, last January 5.
Mr FitzGibbon said the subsequent police pursuit of the defendants had be carried out in the “most public way imaginable”.
He said: “Their story, you may recall, was a sensation and was reported sensationally, but you do not deal in sensationalism.
“So she is grieving and has this enduring sense of grievance which you have seen whenever she speaks about social services and the family court.
“We are not here to retry the family court case, that’s done, it’s over, decisions have been made.”
The defendants were arrested in Brighton last February 27, two days before Victoria’s decomposed body was found inside a Lidl bag in a disused allotment shed.
Mr FitzGibbon replayed a video from Marten’s emotional police interview in which she described how her baby died after being told of the discovery.
During the interview, she said she had considered cremating Victoria and getting “rid of the evidence” but could not do it.
Mr FitzGibbon said: “You will not forget her police interview when you may think she was treated with proper courtesy and respect and when she described the horrific realisation that her baby was dead.
“We say, that gives you a true picture of who she is.”
He added that the interview showed the “genuine grief of a mother who lost her baby in the circumstances she said”.
The lawyer said grief was the “ever-present ghost” of her love for all her five children.
“If she was this cruel neglectful mother, why would she show any concern for the four children that had been taken away from them?” he added.
The lawyer reminded jurors of Marten’s evidence in court that she felt “responsible” for what happened, as any “decent human being would”.
But he said there was no evidence of hypothermia and what Marten had said in court was “miles away from being guilty of a crime”.
The defendants, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The Old Bailey trial continues.
