Opinion ID: 2796197
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Crime of Conviction and Sentence

Text: Defendant was charged in November 1993 with child-abuse murder in the first degree for the death of Adam Broomhall, his girlfriend’s three-year-old son. In his prior appeal to this court, we summarized the OCCA’s description of the facts of the crime as follows: In November 1993, [Defendant] was living with Stacy Broomhall and her three children in Midwest City, Oklahoma. On November 13, 1993, [Defendant] and Ms. Broomhall drank beer most of the afternoon and evening. [Defendant] consumed approximately twelve beers between 2:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. That evening, they drove to Ms. Broomhall’s mother’s house in north Oklahoma City and continued to drink. By the time they were ready to leave, [Defendant] and Ms. Broomhall were too intoxicated to drive, so Ms. Broomhall’s seventeen-year-old sister, Charity Wade[,] drove them home. Ms. Wade had intended to spend the night at Ms. Broomhall’s house. But she decided not to do so after [Defendant] made a sexual advance toward her. Instead, Ms. Wade put Ms. Broomhall’s three children to bed and called a taxi to take her home. While Ms. Wade waited outside for the cab, [Defendant] retrieved a baseball bat and told her that, “if someone other than a cab driver came to pick her up, he was going to beat him to death.” When Ms. Wade left in the cab, some time before 10:30 p.m., Ms. Broomhall’s three-year-old son Adam was asleep in his own bed. Roughly three hours later, Adam woke up crying and got out of bed. His mother was asleep, and [Defendant] told Adam to “hush it up.” When Adam persisted, [Defendant] hit him several times, rupturing the inside of his upper lip and his left ear-drum, and he held Adam’s chest and then buttocks against a hot wall heater causing severe second-degree gridpatterned burns. [Defendant] told a detective several days later, “I think I pushed him up against the heater and held him up there,” and, “The more he screamed, the more I just kept on hitting him.” When [Defendant] threw Adam against the drop-leaf dining table, he stopped breathing. 3 [Defendant] woke Ms. Broomhall and called 911. Adam was rushed to the hospital, but the head injury had caused severe hemorrhaging and swelling, and he died later that morning, never having regained consciousness. Examination indicated that Adam had sustained approximately twenty-six blows to his body, including several to his head. In a written statement to the police, [Defendant] claimed that Adam was running in the house and “ran right into the table.” Fairchild, 579 F.3d at 1137‒38 (citations omitted).