Hearing Postponed After Kimberly Fry Outburst

Convicted murderer Kimberly Fry's motion for a new trial was halted abruptly Friday morning after Fry had an outburst in court, declaring "I am not a murderess," just as the hearing was getting underway, according to reports from wpri.com.

Fry also reportedly fired her attorney during the hearing, which Superior Court Judge William E. Carnes Jr. continued to a later, undetermined date. Fry had just hired attorney Joseph Salvadore about a month ago, replacing public defenders Sarah Wright and John Lavoy, who led Fry's defense that she accidentally killed her 8-year-old daughter Camden in 2009. Salvadore reportedly planned to argue Fry never consented to the accidental-death defense. She was convicted of second-degree murder last October after a nearly month-long trial.

The jury came to its decision after about five hours of deliberation. The jurors found the state proved Fry strangled her daughter in their North Kingstown home at 73 Ricci Lane in August 2009, reportedly while the young girl threw a temper tantrum over not wanting to take a bath. Fry then took a cocktail of prescription drugs in a failed attempt to commit suicide.

Timothy Fry found his daughter dead in her bed the next morning, tucked under the covers with a stuffed elephant placed in her arms. He called 911, the recording of which prosecutor Stephen Regine played for the court while Tim Fry sobbed on the stand.

The defense, while acknowledging that Camden died at her mother's hands — said Kimberly Fry never intended to kill her daughter. Rather, she was performing a restraint technique designed to quell a tantrum, a claim backed up by former RI Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Elizabeth Laposata. Another pathologist, Dr. William Cox, who performed the original autopsy on Camden's body, found she died of manual strangulation.

The penalty for second-degree murder ranges from 10 years to life in the Adult Correctional Institutes in Cranston. If she is sentenced to life in prison, Kimberly Fry would be elligible for parole in 2031.