By  Seamus McGraw

November 7, 2006

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BOULDER, Colo. (Crime Library) — Though it is rarely used in criminal cases in Colorado, the state's grand jury system may be Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy's best —and perhaps last — hope to end the eight-month-old probe into the alleged beating death of infant Jason Midyette and to at last bring someone to justice for the baby's slaying.

That's the assessment of several law enforcement officials and Colorado lawyers, who, while not directly involved in the case, have been closely following the public controversy over the infant's death last spring and the district attorney's apparently plodding probe into it.

D.A. Mary Lacy

But there's still no official word that Lacy has asked a grand jury to look at the case.

The baby, the 11-week-old scion of one of Boulder's oldest and influential families, was the victim of a homicide, the county's medical examiner declared after an autopsy and an exhaustive review of its results. But in the nearly five months since that autopsy report was released, the investigation has been shrouded in near-total secrecy.

Lacy's office and the Louisville police, who are leading the probe, have declined to say anything about the case beyond an oft-repeated assertion that the investigation is ongoing.

Louisville, CO Police Department

But while suspicion, at least in the press and among the public, has focused almost exclusively on baby Jason's parents, Alex Midyette and his wife Molly, no one has been charged in connection with the case.

That may be because the Midyettes, who were by all accounts the only ones who had regular access to the baby, retained lawyers almost immediately after they brought the infant to a hospital emergency room last February with a fractured skull and some two dozen other broken bones, some already in the process of healing, and have thus far said little to investigators.

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