Amanda Lewis is currently serving a lifetime prison sentence for drowning her little girl in a paddling pool eight years ago.
Her 7-year-old son, AJ, said he saw the whole thing and it was his testimony which got his mother convicted.
Footage from the trial shows him telling a courtroom of people he saw his mother hold his half-sister Adrianna face down in the water.
The prosecutor asks him to explain the meaning behind a drawing showing stick figure standing around a pool.
“That’s my momma,” he says. “Killing my sister.”
Asked how she was doing it, he replied, “Putting her hand over her face.”
The picture AJ drew in court. Source: ITV
The clip appears in the second episode of Piers Morgan's new documentary series Killer Women, which focusses on Lewis' crime.
Lewis, who was a 27-year-old single mother at the time, has consistently denied being responsible for her daughter death.
A denial she re-iterated when Morgan asked her outright if she'd done it.
Amanda Lewis on Killer Women. Source: ITV
Lewis maintains Adrianna had been cleaning bugs out of the water when she slipped and drowned in the water, she called an ambulance but it was too late.
Despite her claims, which were verified by a polygraph test, AJ told his grandparents, and later police and child experts, he'd seen his mother push her over and hold her down.
"She done some stuff that she ain't suppose so my mama got mad, so she throwed her in the pool," he told police.
The trial footage shows him bursting into tears after failing to recognise his mother in court.
After the episode aired viewers took to social media to debate Lewis' innocence.
Many expressed their heartbreak for the child and asked the obvious question: what possible reason could a 7-year-old have to lie?
Feature image: ITV
Top Comments
Wait.
The child is 7 but the event happened 8 years ago???
Maybe my maths is wrong... But unless this testimony is from years ago and the boy is now older, he wouldn't have been alive.
Maybe word this differently Mamamia?
He was 7 when it happened, and it happened 8 years ago. So yes he'd be much older now. It's just being highlighted due to the documentary
Thank you! The first paragraph is misleading hahaha
7 year olds don't necessarily need a 'reason to lie'. Memory is a fluid process, not a concrete one. Each time we recall an event, memory is 're-consolidated' in light of new information. This is not a conscious process - we have no awareness that the memory has changed. And we all do it.
Another poster commented that the 7 year old gave 13 different stories. This is not surprising at all. Children in particular are extremely suggestible to suggestion. If you've ever seen video tapes of actual police interviews, you would be well aware that suggestion is commonplace, even for trained child interview specialists.
I have no personal opinion regarding what happened here, because it's impossible to know if you are not there. I do feel incredibly sad for this young boy who is clearly traumatised by the loss of his sister, however it occurred.
Yeah, it's like when a 7 year old girl accusses a grown man of moelsting her, we shouldn't necessarily believe her, even if she passes a lie sector test.
There have been so many girls and boys molested by adult men that we could fill the MCG thousands of times with all the survivors. You know the really scary part? Most of those men have never been held accountable for those CRIMES.
If a 7 year old girl accuses a grown man of molesting her, we should take her story seriously. If her story changes 12 times, we should be extremely cautious, particularly if it changes each time she is interviewed. I can't think of many situations where a 7yo would be subjected to a lie detector test. In this case, it was the mother who passed the test, not the child.
Lie detector tests are not infallible. They rely on an anxiety response to questions asked. There is substantial research showing they provide inconsistent results. It's why they are not considered evidence in Australia.
I'm not even sure if you are being facetious, but if so, you probably need to research your subject matter a bit more thoroughly.
I know there is meant to be a tone of sarcastic disgust here but yes, we shouldn't automatically believer her. You don't agree with innocent until proven guilty?
The human mind is fascinating the way we recall events, including incredibly significant ones. Memories can absolutely be manipulated and suggested. There was an experiment where subjects were all implanted with the same childhood memory. They all had vivid recall of being asked for directions by a scary old lady when they were little. This was the memory implanted (by suggestion) by the researchers.
Anyway, sorry your tone just annoyed me a little as you seem to have missed the point. I don't know this case and I'm not going to investigate it further but yes, my first thought was that if the boys testimony was the only evidence, that's really shit.