Marine who shook infant sentenced to nine years

[luvmipapa]

Strip him naked,cover body with honey/molasses, stake spreadeagle 100 feet from nearest aint mound in SW AZ desert, set viedo camera up, turn on and walk away.

[luvmipapa]

Sorry fingers aren't what they used to be. ANT

[Zulu 36]

Shaken baby syndrome is pretty darned common, sad to say. It doesn't take much to cause it either. Cops do not like those cases at all.

One of my detectives worked a case of SBS where the baby only survived because he was taken to one of the best places possible to treat those injuries in the Detroit area. The neurosurgeon was a true pro at fixing those things. However, he was not optimistic about the babies long-term neurological prospects as far as a normal life.

The father of the baby was a sheriff's deputy and the suspect was the baby's mother, whom I had known when she slung burgers at MickeyDs as a teen. My detective nearly worked himself into the hospital himself trying to prove the criminal case, but we kept coming up just a little too short to make the prosecutor happy.

Had the suspect been a babysitter, we probably would have gone ahead, but mothers make really sympathetic defendants at trial and you need a pretty tight case (see Andrea Yates re-trial).

Now here is the real tragedy of this case. Custody of the baby was taken from the parents and given to the maternal grandmother (who lived in a neighboring county). Mom and dad were only allowed supervised visits, but grandma had been allowing mom to spend nights alone with the baby. One night, about one year after the original injury, the baby "mysteriously" died.

Once again, a case against mom was almost impossible to put together (not from lack of trying on the department involved). Mom and grandma could only be charged with violating the supervised visitation order. The judge did park them in the can for 30-days, pretty much the limit for those matters.

We (the police and prosecutor) had argued against the maternal grandmother having custody because we felt she was a prime mover in the cover up activities, but once again fell short in the proof department. You know, the pesky difference between knowing and proving.

God, was I pis*ed when the baby died, and I thought my detective was going to have a heart attack he was so upset. I almost went back to drinking over that one.

The father also got in trouble with his boss for making threats to me and my detective one time in court. Evidently he didn't know I'd known the Sheriff for many years, even before he got elected and was a sergeant. A sheriff can drop a quite a large load of doo-doo on you when you work for him.

I guess you get your small victories in these things when you can.

[rktect3j]

Having a three year old and now my wife being 7 months pregnant I have been trying to avoid reading this thread. Too late now. So I guess my thoughts are to have the bastard drawn and quartered. Simple yet effective.