BABY DEATH WILL TEST LAW ON DRUG USE

Anndreah Robertson suffered a death so horrible that the 4-pound newborn
grunted and screamed in pain as her intestines steadily decayed. Born
addicted to cocaine, she died 10 days later.

"I have an obligation to figure out what happened, and she's deserving of
that," Phoenix police Detective Anthony Jones told the baby's mother in an
interview five days after Anndreah's Nov. 9 death. "She didn't deserve to
die that way."

No one disagrees. But nearly a year later, exactly what caused Anndreah's
tortured death remains in question. Her mother and grandmother have been
arrested, and prosecutors are making last-minute preparations for a
groundbreaking preliminary hearing that begins Monday.

Maricopa County prosecutors blame Anndreah's death on a lethal stream of
secondhand crack cocaine smoke from her mother and grandmother's crack
pipe, a theory being tested for the first time in Arizona.

Pitted against them are medical experts who say the baby's death was caused
by the cocaine her mother, Demitres Robertson, smoked during her pregnancy,
including the day of Anndreah's birth. In Arizona, and several other
states, prenatal substance abuse is not a crime.

The state's star witness: a husband who is sparing himself by testifying
against his wife - a wife who four years ago persuaded a judge not to put
him behind bars for violating probation on a drug charge.

Solomon Butler told investigators, according to police reports, that his
wife, Lillian, who is Anndreah's grandmother, and Robertson smoked cocaine
around the infant. He also once told a Child Protective Services worker
that he worried that crack smoke was affecting Robertson's two other
toddlers, according to police reports.

"It's an unusual case with an unusual set of facts," Maricopa County
Attorney Rick Romley said.

Indeed, Anndreah Robertson's death sparked CPS to implement a new policy
that makes drug-addicted babies a higher priority and refueled debate among
lawmakers who seek to make it a crime to expose a fetus to drugs. But for
Anndreah, prosecutors must prove the baby was harmed by exposure to drugs
after her birth.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gregory Martin will decide at the
close of the preliminary hearing, a mini-trial of sorts that is expected to
last three days, whether there is enough reasonable evidence to believe
that Robertson, 23, a convicted prostitute, and the child's grandmother,
Lillian Butler, 44, caused the baby's death.

If he disagrees with the secondhand-smoke theory, Martin could dismiss the
charges, allowing prosecutors to refile only if they come up with more
compelling evidence.

Robertson, who told police Anndreah "looked like a skeleton" before she
died, is charged with murder and child abuse. Butler, who referred to the
10-day-old "as my dream baby," faces two counts of child abuse.

Robertson, who is expecting another baby, told police she didn't "have much
to do with babies" and said she couldn't be responsible for Anndreah's
death because she was rarely at the family's tiny central Phoenix apartment.

"I smoked crack around my baby only one time," she said, telling Jones
instead that it was her mother and stepfather "who got high."

James Cleary, Lillian Butler's county-paid attorney, said he will focus his
defense in part on doctors' findings that it would be impossible for
secondhand cocaine smoke to cause the deadly intestinal condition that
killed Anndreah.

Prosecutors decided to seek a preliminary hearing, rather than an
indictment, in part because Solomon Butler, 53, has a terminal illness.

Grand jury testimony is inadmissible at trial, whereas testimony from
preliminary hearings is allowed because attorneys for both sides have an
opportunity to question witnesses.

Lillian Butler, who does not have a criminal record, told police she smoked
crack to "relax my mind," and ease memories of a murdered son and the
rigors of caring for her daughter's children, according to police records.

"She is a loving mother and grandmother," said Lillian Butler's brother,
James Craig, 45, a Phoenix firefighter who took in his sister after she was
released from jail on bail.

"She is not the best person, but she is not the worst."

Craig said he never saw evidence of drug abuse when his sister appeared at
family get-togethers.

"If we would have known she was abusing drugs, we would have gotten her
help," he said.