The move has been labelled as “disgusting” by the victim’s father who said he had been left feeling drained and let down by the criminal justice system.
After filing the appeal in September - planning to argue the defendant should have been imprisoned - a Crown Law spokeswoman confirmed the abrupt turnaround this week.
“The Crown has become aware of information which is relevant to whether it remains in the public interest ... to pursue the sentence appeal,” she said.
“Following receipt of that information and upon re-evaluating the matter, the deputy solicitor-general [criminal] decided to abandon the Crown's appeal.”
While she would not specify what that information was, the victim’s father said he had been told by officials it concerned the difficult pregnancy his former partner was currently going through.
The man told the Otago Daily Times he felt there had been no justice for him or his boy.
“They have been that worried about her and her mental health, but now I’m at the point of falling to bits and the children will be left with no parents,” he said.
The appeal abandonment comes on the back of the High Court’s decision to grant the defendant permanent name suppression earlier this month.
That had been opposed by the boy’s father but consented to by prosecutors.
The woman was suffering from factitious disorder imposed on another (formerly known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy) at the time of offending, the court heard before she was sentenced to 11 months’ home detention in August.
In 2019, the boy was in Dunedin Hospital and had been cleared for discharge when the poisoning began.
Over a short period, the mother secretly administered antidepressants and eye drops, actions she took after numerous internet searches of the consequences.
The victim was later airlifted to Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland where he was put in an induced coma.
The mother continued the use of harmful chemicals on her son - stealing from the hospital pharmacy to replenish her supplies - until her crimes were uncovered through toxicology results.
While the episode, according to scans, appeared to have caused the boy brain damage, his father said he had not yet seen any severe ill-effects.
