GUILTY TX - Breanna Perry, 3, beaten to death, Denison, 28 Nov 2012

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http://www.kxii.com/news/headlines/Denison-Police-investigate-childs-death-181877101.htmlDENISON, TX - Denison Police say they are investigating the death of a three-year-old child last week.


"snip"
Police Chief Jay Burch says officers were called to Texoma Medical Center Wednesday evening when the girl was being treated for serious injuries....

This one is close to home. I saw a breaking news on my facebook feed.
Parents or abusers have not been named.

Hope I did this right.
 
From February 2014:

http://heralddemocrat.com/news/local/man-arrested-2012-death-denison-three-year-old

Authorities arrested a man Thursday in connection with the 2012 death of Breanna Michelle Perry, 3, of Denison.

On Nov. 28, 2012, Denison Police Officer Troy Laroche responded to a call of injury to a child at Texoma Medical Center, DPD Lt. Mike Eppler said in a written statement. The child was flown by air ambulance to a Dallas hospital where she later died. Denison Police Department investigators, led by Detective Chris Nordhoff, discovered that the child had a fractured skull, bruising in the head and facial areas, and showed evidence of choking.

From June 2015:

http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/...killing-todder-set-for-October-307045871.html

Justin Boyce is charged with capital murder of a person under 6 years of age, murder, and injury to a child with intent to cause serious bodily injury...

His jury trial is now set for October.
 
October 2015 - trial begins:

The little girls, Breanna and K, who was 11 months older, were left alone with Boyce, Brown said, after their mother and grandmother got into an argument over the way Boyce disciplined Breanna for failing to master potty training.

The prosecutor cautioned jurors that the trial would not be an easy one because to prove how Breanna died, it would be necessary to show them some graphic photos and subject them to testimony about the extent of the child’s injuries. He also said they might not like some of the people they would hear from in the case including the grieving mother. Brown told jurors that Sara Perry has stood by Justin Boyce even though prosecutors contend that he killed her child. She has even, Brown said, had a child with him...

As for why Boyce would kill the child, Brown said Boyce has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and that he has difficulty empathizing with others. He also, Brown said, has problems with social interactions and with fixating on routines. Brown said Boyce’s routine to play video games intersected with Breanna’s need for attention on the day that she died.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/co...who-died-fractured-skull#sthash.yG9e1OMU.dpuf

The 911 call Boyce made was also played for the jurors. In it they could hear Boyce telling her to breathe as she was having a seizure.

Prosecutors pointed out that Boyce seemed to have no emotion, but the defense says that's because he suffers from Aspberger syndrome.

http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/...murder-trial--330972862.html?device=phone&c=y
 
Prosecutors say he beat the child to death hitting her with a blunt force object and fracturing the occipital bone in her head. The defense says the child died from a combination of injuries sustained over a couple of days. They say she fell over a low bed and struck a toy one day and then was jumped on by her 4-year-old sister on Nov. 28, 2012...

The doctors said whatever happened to Breanna wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. He said those around her would have immediately known something was wrong with her and within a few minutes they would have known it was serious. When asked about the defense’s theory — that she was hurt days earlier and already suffering from an injury on the day of her death when she was then injured again — Creme said that wasn’t likely.

Ashmore, Creme and Jarvis then spent a very long time playing tug of war over published studies about the likelihood that children can sustain life-threatening brain injuries and then live for hours or days after, even sometimes acting somewhat normal.
Jarvis said there is literature that suggests that it is the case, which means it is possible that the defense’s theory — that Breanna fell off the bed and hit her head on a toy one day and then was bounced on by her older sister the next day and died as a result of the two actions together — could be true.


Jarvis said even if that is true, there are studies that showed the second hit syndrome seems to exist. Creme agreed. The two then discussed the way scientific theories change over time. Jarvis asked if there weren’t, not too many years ago, people who were convicted of killing children through shaken baby syndrome. Creme agreed there were. He also agreed that the theory about that syndrome has now changed. Once experts thought the babies died from the injuries sustained when their brains bounced off their own skull, it is now believed that the child’s head must strike something, even if it is only the child’s own body, to cause the fatal injuries.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/co...-about-injuries-they-saw#sthash.JwsMKfnl.dpuf
 
Like many other nurses who have testified in the case, Fitzwater testified that she saw distinct finger shaped bruises on the right side of the little girl’s neck. She said she had seen bruises like that on a child before in a case of child abuse. Unlike other nurses who testified, Fitzwater said she didn’t see any blood in the child’s hair, but she said there was blood on the child’s lip...

Even as Denison Police Detective William Nordhoff talked about the devastating injuries the little girl sustained, Boyce said the two little girls fought all of the time, punching each other in the face. He also said the baby sitters were not properly watching the girls on that day because Breanna was allowed to continue to sit in her soiled diaper until they returned home from errands.

See more at: http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/co...ements-boyce-made-police#sthash.isXWiWTx.dpuf
 
View attachment 86465

One of the most pressing questions in the case, and one about which jurors heard a great deal Friday, is the absence of a murder weapon. The indictment in the case said Boyce hit the girl with an unknown blunt object...

Jurors also saw the layout of the house and the furniture throughout the house. Prosecutor Kerye Ashmore took great care to ask question after question about whether a fall off of or onto any of those things could have caused the fracture that Breanna suffered to her occipital bone (a very thick bone in the back of the head). Time after time, Nordhoff said none of the items could be considered a legitimate cause for the child’s injuries...

Nordhoff, the day’s only witness, said authorities zeroed in on Boyce as a suspect after doctors told the about the short window they would have had for Breanna to have been noticeably altered after the blow or blows that injured her. He said Boyce was the person who was with the children in that window.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/court-news/defense-points-lack-murder-weapon#sthash.oDuKG8Oq.dpuf
 
[Doctor Matthew] Cox said the injury to her brain was likely caused by a blunt force injury that caused a fracture of her occipital bone, is a well-sheltered bone at the back of the head. He also talked to jurors about the bruises on the child, including a large bruise on her ear.

“It would have to be a pretty good lick?” Ashmore asked questioning how hard someone would have had to hit the child to cause the purple bruise.

“Yes,” Cox said...

He said the mother said the child was left with baby sitters on the morning that she was injured, but that Sara Perry and Boyce picked the two girls up and took them to lunch where the Breanna ate despite having a low-grade fever. When they returned home, Breanna was cranky and Sara Perry put her to bed. Breanna was awake watching television when the Sara Perry left, Cox said she told him...

Cox said the young girl’s injuries looked like child abuse to him.

All throughout the trial, Ashmore has tried to tighten that time frame down to the point that jurors only have Boyce to blame. Just as hard as Ashmore tries to point to Boyce as the culprit, Boyce’s attorney, Bob Jarvis, has worked to widen that time frame.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/court-news/jurors-hear-medical-examiner-breanna-perry-murder-case

The medical examiner,Dr. Jonie McClain, showed autopsy photos showing the bleeding inside Breanna's head. She said that such injuries usually occur in vehicle accidents, and could not be caused by falling off a bed or being jumped on by a small child. She said that Breanna would have shown obvious symptoms very soon after the injury - seconds, or minutes after.
 
The jury heard an audio recording of the accused's police interview.

When questioned about what caused the injuries the child suffered, Boyce claimed to know nothing.

“Did you choke this child?” Tillman asked Boyce on the recording.

“No, I did not,” Boyce answered in a calm voice.

Tillman continued to hammer away at Boyce saying that he was the only one in the house when the child received the horrific injuries she sustained. Tillman repeatedly asked Boyce if he hurt the child, and Boyce repeatedly denied it very calmly.

Jarvis asked [Police Officer] Hayth about the different ways DPD officers tried to get Boyce to admit hurting the child and asked if they were successful. Hayth said they weren’t, and Jarvis asked if Hayth considered the reason for that is that Boyce didn’t hurt the child. Jarvis pointed out that Boyce willingly gave police access to his cellphone on the day that Breanna was injured. He also offered to let them into the house where the incident occurred.

- See more at: http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/co...er-syndrome-defense-says#sthash.0gq8Ajad.dpuf

Sara Perry's sister, Breanna's aunt then took the stand. She said she spent a lot of time with her nieces and had never seen them fighting or punching each other. However, she said that "she did begin to notice unusual bruises on Breanna about the time that Boyce entered the family’s life. She showed jurors photos she took of bruises on the child’s face just days before her death."
 
The mother takes the stand. Both the prosecution and the defence try to paint her as a liar.

[Prosecutor] Ashmore asked her which of her statements were true. Was it the ones she gave to police early on when she said Breanna was fine when she left her to go to work or the ones she made later when she talked about the little girl not feeling well and being clingy.

Perry said Breanna was clingy that day. She said the child did not want her to go to work. The mother even said her 3-year-old asked to go to the doctor. So Ashmore asked why she didn’t take her. The mother said she didn’t think the child required medical attention. She added that she wishes now she had taken her to the doctor.

Ashmore showed her a stack of medical records that showed she didn’t seem to hesitate to take the child to the doctor.

When Jarvis took over, he asked, how could she sit up there for hours and talk about and look at photos of Breanna and not shed a single tear?

“I have been trying not to cry,” she said...

Then, Jarvis said Perry was the one who was alone with the girls before she left. She had time, he said, to snap under all of that pressure and hurt Breanna before putting her back into bed with her sister and leaving. Why, he asked, should anyone believe what she was saying on the stand when she had lied so many times before.

Http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/co...tand-capital-murder-case#sthash.s5wunRJH.dpuf
 
October 15th, prosecutors rest their case.

After showing her a number of photos that she took of her two young daughters before Boyce came into their lives, Ashmore asked her how long she had been a single mother before she met Boyce. She said it had been around two years. He then asked her how many of those photos showed bruises. Though Perry said the children did get bruises, she couldn’t deny that they never suffered the kind of injuries that took her daughter’s life...

Jarvis said Perry, rather than his client, was the most likely candidate for someone who could have snapped and hurt Breanna. He said Breanna was clingy and ill on the day she died and her mother had to get to work on time or face being fired. He said Perry could have injured the child and then put her to bed, leaving her for Boyce to find...

Next, Ashmore moved on to two other people the defense has repeatedly thrown under the bus during the trial — the babysitters who stayed with Breanna and Kairi on the day Breanna was injured...

Runion said she and Berry had been up late the night before and she went to sleep not long after getting there. However, she said, she did see a bruise under Breanna’s eye and a bump on her head.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/local/prosecutors-finish-their-evidence-boyce-capital-murder-case
 
Oct 17th:

Friday, Jarvis called Dr. Robert Bux to the stand. Bux is the elected coroner in El Paso, Colorado. Bux said he reviewed medical records that went all of the way back to Breanna’s birth. He also reviewed her autopsy and the Children’s Advocacy Center interview with Kairi.

He said he had performed many autopsies on children and told the jury that investigations into the deaths of children are “very complicated.” He said he makes it a practice to wait until he has all of the information he can possibly get before ruling on such deaths.

Bux said the human head is the most mysterious part of the body from a doctor’s point of view and that there are not nearly enough studies about how injuries impact the brain for doctors to be confident about some things.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/local/jurors-hear-second-medical-examiner-boyce-case
 
October 19th:

The major defense witness of the day was Dr. Chris Van Ee, biomechanic engineer, who said Breanna could have suffered the blow that fractured her skull and caused her brain to swell when her sister K. jumped on the child...

Jarvis also asked a number of questions about whether or not the child could have suffered the fracture to the back of her skull while climbing around in the house. He pointed out that the babysitters charged with watching the two little girls slept most of the morning that Breanna was hurt. He said a child climbing for food, water or the remote control could have fallen on the hardwood floors of the house at Perrin Field and suffered the injury that eventually killed her...

Van Ee said the injury to occipital bone (located at the very base of the skull) was likely caused by Kairi jumping on Breanna’s head. He said the massive bruise and knot on Breanna’s forehead probably came from her brain being squeezed between Kairi’s body weight and the floor after Breanna struck her head on the floor.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/court-news/boyce-not-testifying-capital-murder-case
 
Brown said Boyce told investigators he was going to clean Sarah Perry’s bedroom and play a game. That was his routine. Brown said Breanna interrupted that routine by being sick and that caused Boyce to react violently.

"We just know,” Jarvis said referring to the state’s position. “We don’t have any evidence that supports our theory, but we have a theory. Justin did it. Justin did all of the bruises.

“They (prosecutors) don’t bring any evidence, but the theory is Justin did it.”

Ashmore took the jury back through the wounds that the young girl suffered and said there is no way what happened to her could have been an accident. The child suffered a fracture of one of the hardest bones at the base of the skull. That fracture and the bleeding it caused made the brain swell to the point that it cut off all of the oxygen to her brain and she died.

http://m.heralddemocrat.com/news/court-news/boyce-guilty-murder-takes-stand-sentencing-phase
 

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