Psychologist that assessed mother who killed her baby was struck off for being ‘racist’, jury told
Dr Robert Simpson-Lambert had assessed Sarah Ngaba in prison.
A psychologist who assessed a Telford mother’s mental fitness after she was jailed for an assault on her baby that led to her death was later struck off following a professional misconduct hearing for being ‘racist’, a jury has been told.
Eliza Ngaba died aged two in August 2022 from an infection after her injuries caused by her mother left her vulnerable.
Sarah Ngaba, 32, accepts that she caused “dreadful, life-shortening and life-limiting” head injuries to Eliza when she was seven weeks old but denies murder, claiming she is instead guilty of infanticide.
Ngaba, formerly of Briarwood in Brookside, Telford, was previously convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to Eliza, after fracturing the baby’s skull on the morning of November 13, 2019.
She was later charged with murder following Eliza’s death in 2022.
During Ngaba’s murder trial at Birmingham Crown Court this week, jurors were told by the prosecution, led by Jonas Hankin KC, that it was agreed that head injuries inflicted by Ngaba were “a cause” of Eliza’s death as they had left her profoundly disabled and vulnerable to severe complications from infection, including death.
The prosecution said the sole issue for them to decide is whether the balance of Ngaba’s mind was disturbed at the time of the attack, and if that disturbance was partly caused by a failure to fully recover from the effects of giving birth.
However, today (May 14) the jury was told that a psychologist that assessed Ngaba’s state of mind while she was in prison in 2020 had later been found guilty at a misconduct hearing for “racism”.
The jury heard that Dr Robert Lambert-Simpson, a psychologist, faced a misconduct probe after providing evidence to the police following his assessment of Ngaba in 2020.
Dr Lambert-Simpson’s evidence was presented to the jury earlier this week among the “agreed facts” of the prosecution’s case.
But the judge, The Honourable Mrs Justice Catherine Brunner KC, told the jury: “Very recently it has come to the attention of lawyers in this case that Lambert-Simpson has been struck off and is no longer allowed to work as a psychologist.
“That’s because a disciplinary hearing found he was dishonest, lacked integrity and was racist.”
In light of the revelation, she ordered the jury to disregard Dr Lambert-Simpson’s evidence.
She said: “Experts who have behaved in that way are generally not allowed to give evidence to a jury. Both the prosecution and defence believe Lambert-Simpson’s evidence is unreliable and I agree with that view.”
She added: ”If we had known this before the trial we would not have included his evidence.”
Today the jury was also shown a series of CCTV images, which showed Ngaba buying a lottery ticket from a Brookside convenience store following the attack on her daughter in November 2019 before taking the baby to hospital in a taxi.
The prosecution is expected to close its case against Ngaba tomorrow (May 15).
Ngaba denies murder but admits infanticide. The trial continues.