Chatman v. State

680 S.W.3d 805

2023 Ark. App. 590

Jonathan CHATMAN, Appellant

v.STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

No. CR-23-126

Court of Appeals of Arkansas, DIVISION I.

Opinion Delivered December 13, 2023

APPEAL FROM THE FAULKNER COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT [NO. 23CR-20-1193], HONORABLE TROY B. BRASWELL, JR., JUDGE

James Law Firm, by: William O. "Bill" James, Jr., Little Rock, and Drew Curtis, for appellant.

Tim Griffin, Att’y Gen., by: Brooke Jackson Gasaway, Ass’t Att’y Gen., for appellee.

CINDY GRACE THYER, Judge

₁Appellant Jonathan Chatman was charged with capital murder in the death of seventeen-month-old Minor Child (MC). A Faulkner County jury convicted him of second-degree murder and sentenced him to thirty years in the Arkansas Department of Correction. On appeal, Chatman does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction. Instead, he argues that the circuit court erred in allowing the State to introduce specific rebuttal testimony. We find no error and affirm.

On December 8, 2020, Jayriana Edgerson left her daughter, MC, with Chatman while she went to run some errands. She was gone approximately forty-five minutes to an hour. When she came home, MC was lying on the bed, unresponsive; Chatman was sweating; there was a hole in the living room wall; and the bathroom sink had been broken. Chatman told her that MC had choked on a grape and had been throwing up. Edgerson took her ₂daughter to Conway Regional Medical Center, where she told the doctors MC had choked on a grape. After reviewing a CT scan of MC’s skull, which indicated a skull fracture, medical staff informed Edgerson that the choking scenario was not possible.

Because of the skull fracture, Conway Regional staff made arrangements to have MC taken by helicopter to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. Once there, pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Gregory Albert performed surgery to attempt to relieve the swelling on MC’s brain. Sadly, the surgery was unsuccessful, and MC succumbed to her injuries.

Chatman was arrested as he arrived at Children’s in Little Rock. He first gave a statement to Sergeant Timothy Gray. Chatman told Gray that MC fell out of her bed and hit the back of her head. According to Chatman, she then went to the living room, where she played with her toys for a while. Chatman said he went to the restroom, and when he came out, MC was leaning against the couch. Chatman picked her up and put her back in bed, then he returned to the living room. Five or ten minutes later, he heard her choking. He ran to the bedroom, where he saw that she had vomited. Chatman said there were grapes on the bed next to her, so he thought she was choking on a grape; he turned MC over on her stomach and began patting her on the back. He then undressed her and stripped the bed so he could wash the soiled clothing and linens. Edgerson returned home shortly thereafter, and they took MC to Conway Regional. Gray asked how MC could have sustained a skull fracture if what Chatman said was true, but Chatman denied that anything had happened other than MC’s falling out of bed and hitting her head.

₃A few hours after his first statement, Chatman gave another statement to Detective Brittani Little. He told her essentially the same story that he had told Gray. Little eventually interjected by informing Chatman that she had spoken to the doctors, who told her there had been "a force that hit [MC’s] head" and that her injuries could not have been caused by falling off a couch or a countertop. Chatman denied hitting MC in the head. Little also asked about the broken sink, and although Chatman acknowledged breaking it, he denied that MC was in the bathroom with him when it happened. Chatman repeatedly denied hitting or punching MC, wrestling with her, or being upset with her.

In a second statement to Sergeant Gray, Chatman vehemently denied hitting, kicking, or touching MC or doing anything to cause her harm or cause her death. He said that the only time he touched her was to pick her up and put her back into bed.

An autopsy revealed that MC’s death was caused by multiple blunt-force head injuries. Those injuries included a Y-shaped comminuted fracture of her right parietal skull bone; hemorrhaging and contusions to the right temporal lobe of her brain; and edema of her brain. The medical examiner explained that it would take an extreme amount of force to cause a comminuted fracture to a baby’s skull, adding that a fall from a three-foot-high bed, for example, would be unlikely to cause such an extensive fracture.

Dr. Karen Farst, an expert in child-abuse pediatrics, testified that she reviewed MC’s medical records and determined that the initial history that was given was inconsistent with the severity of her brain injuries. She noted that there was a very significant skull fracture on the right side of MC’s skull and a large area of bleeding on her brain that caused her brain ₄to shift within her skull. She said she would not expect a skull fracture of that magnitude to have been caused by a fall from a bed. The type of head injury that MC sustained was "not something that results from a fall of just the weight of the child themselves without something else, like somebody falling on top of them or them being propelled or being struck by something…. Or being, you know, struck forcibly with an object."

Chatman testified in his own defense at trial and offered a new account of events. He conceded that he lied to the police about what had happened and admitted that he had caused the injury to MC’s head that caused her death. He recalled that MC was "crying and crying," so he picked her up to take her to the bathroom to wipe off her face. She "kept screaming and kept screaming," and he "kind of lost it for a second. I had her in my hands and she was yanking. She was jerking and everything. And so that is how it end[ed] up—the edge of the sink." He said that he shook MC "just for a split second," and when he shook her, "the back of her head had hit the edge of the sink." He explained that he was just trying to clean her face off and "she was jerking and everything … and her head end[ed] up hitting" the sink.

On cross-examination, Chatman agreed that MC hit the sink "pretty hard." He denied "slamming" her into the sink, however, saying he shook her and that she was "bucking" back and forth when the back of her head hit the sink. He repeatedly said that he did not slam her into the sink but that she hit her head as she was bucking. On redirect, he conceded that he was shaking MC when her head hit the sink.

₅After the defense rested, the State announced its intention to call Dr. Farst to rebut Chatman’s account of what happened to MC. The State noted that Dr. Farst would testify that MC could not have propelled herself hard enough into the sink to cause the skull...