Opinion ID: 1906124
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Law may have accidentally inflicted the fatal injury while playing with Little Jim.

Text: Defense counsel raised the possibility that Law may have accidentally caused the boy's head injury while the two were playing on the night of Little Jim's death; that in swinging the child playfully around the bedroom, he may have inadvertently caused the boy's head to hit the floor or the bunkbed. The record reflects, however, that Law himself did not believe this to be the case. Responding to an inquiry from defense counsel, Law testified I didn't swing him hard. I was doing it slowly, and I got back around here, I was going to sit him back down. I don't know if he just didn't get his footing or if I slipped, my hand slipped, and then he fell, and he hit the floor. But when he come around, he was still far enough away, he put his hands out and caught himself, and I didn't hear him hit the bed or nothing. But I thought maybe he might have or something. So I checked him, but I couldn't really see no signs or anything. The testimony of Dr. Reeves also was sufficient on this point to raise a question for the jury. He testified that there were few parts of the bunkbed which were of the right shape to cause the head injury found on the boy's body. He further testified that you would also have to assume that [Little Jim's head] just happened to hit one of those few small areas that happen to be flat, which is very unlikely to have happened. Then considering and putting into connotation with the distribution on the head, the fact that you get an area on the back of the head, that means the child has gone backwards ... you read some study on skull fractures in children, you find they don't have any... . [T]he only time you see skull fractures of the occipital bones in some studies is by inflicted trauma; it doesn't occur accidentally. Other testimony by Dr. Reeves further contradicted Law's theories, leaving no doubt that the trial judge properly allowed the case to go to the jury: Q: You stated ... that there is no conceivable way that these injuries could have been sustained accidentally. Is that still your opinion, sir? A: Absolutely. Q: And upon what do you base that, briefly? A: Briefly, on the fact that considering every possible explanation, every conceivable cause that I can think of, including everything that's been proposed as an explanation as to why the injuries are here in the distribution pattern and quantity and location that we have them, there is, in my opinion, absolutely no explanation that would explain this, other than intentionally inflicted trauma on this child. Q: [Y]ou stated that the photographs of the bruises on the deceased body are not consistent with the spanking, but with a brutal beating. Is that still your conclusion, sir? A: Yes, it is. ..... Q: If all of these things had happened to the child that very weekend, falling off the bunkbed, falling on the barbells, hitting the coffee table, getting hit by a bike, wrestling in bed, being swung around and hitting the bed, would any of those things have caused his death, in your opinion, in this case? A: For the same reasons I've said before, unless there are extraordinary circumstances that involved each and every one of those, which would mean excessive force, which is very unlikely if not impossible to have happened without some intervening factor, no, that would not have accounted for the injuries because there are too many injuries too diffuse and too diverse to, in fact, be accounted for by just a few isolated injuries. And again, you are taking it out of context when you examine something like this and you see multiple injuries, diffusely, to try to explain one here and one there is sort of absurd. Kids don't sustain multiple serious injuries, especially when they are isolated in various portions of the body, accidentally all the time. I think that would be totally incredible, and the odds against that would be significant. (Emphasis added.) Because we find that it is clear from the record that the state introduced competent evidence from which the jury could have reasonably rejected each of Law's theories, the result reached by the district court cannot stand. Accordingly, the opinion of the district court is approved in part, quashed in part, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. OVERTON, McDONALD, SHAW, BARKETT, GRIMES and KOGAN, JJ., concur.