Jefferson v. Commonwealth

ANTOINE JUWAN JEFFERSON v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

No. 1052-21-3

Court of Appeals of Virginia

December 13, 2022

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF DANVILLE James J. Reynolds Judge

M. Lee Smallwood, II, Deputy Public Defender, for appellant.

Matthew P. Dullaghan, Senior Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Judges Beales, Malveaux and Causey Argued at Salem Virginia

MEMORANDUM OPINION ^[*]

DORIS HENDERSON CAUSEY, JUDGE

On June 10, 2021, following a bench trial, the Circuit Court of the City of Danville convicted appellant, Antoine Juwan Jefferson, of felony child abuse and neglect, in violation of Code § 18.2-371.1, and felony murder, in violation of Code § 18.2-33, of his three-month-old son, D.L.J.^[1] Jefferson appeals his convictions challenging the sufficiency of the Commonwealth's evidence against him. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

BACKGROUND^[2]

During trial, Jefferson testified that on August 9, 2020, he dropped his wife, D.L.J.'s mother, off at work around 5:30 a.m., made D.L.J. a bottle between 11:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., and D.L.J. drank two to four ounces but would not drink anymore. D.L.J. stared at the television blankly. D.L.J. started "hysterically crying" and had trouble breathing between 1:00 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., and Jefferson's efforts to stop the crying were unsuccessful. Jefferson acknowledged that D.L.J.'s crying "was getting on [his] nerves." Jefferson stated that he was frustrated with D.L.J.'s crying; however, he would never take out his frustration on D.L.J. He stated that he thought that if he just shook D.L.J. "a little bit" he would stop crying. D.L.J. became limp and unresponsive. After Jefferson successfully attempted CPR, D.L.J. stopped crying and his breathing appeared to be normal, but he was still limp and unresponsive. Jefferson then put D.L.J. in a car seat and picked up his wife from work before taking D.L.J. to the emergency room.

Jefferson took D.L.J. to the Sovah Emergency Room in Danville. Upon arrival, D.L.J. was not breathing and unresponsive. Doctors were able to revive D.L.J. A CT scan revealed subdural bleeding between his brain and the right side of his skull and bleeding inside his brain. At the hospital, Jefferson told police that D.L.J. had rolled out of his baby bouncer on August 7, 2020. Police photographs at trial indicated the baby bouncer sat about seven to fourteen inches off Jefferson's carpeted living room floor. Jefferson told police that D.L.J. seemed different after the August 7 fall and was crying abnormally on August 9.

Jefferson reported to a detective that D.L.J. had been sick for several days since falling out of the baby bouncer. He reported that he sometimes shook D.L.J. back and forth to make him laugh. Jefferson stated that, on August 8, he held D.L.J. sideways and shook him back and forth trying to get D.L.J. to smile but realized that he might have shaken D.L.J. too hard based on the way D.L.J.'s head shifted side to side. Jefferson admitted that his wife and his mother told him previously not to shake D.L.J. because it could hurt D.L.J.'s brain.

D.L.J.'s heart stopped. Sovah medical staff restarted D.L.J.'s heart and transferred him to Duke Medical Center on August 10 where child abuse and neglect pediatrician Dr. Lindsay Terrell oversaw his care. Jefferson told Dr. Terrell that D.L.J. fell out of a baby bouncer on August 7, after which he was irritable and vomiting. Duke medical staff hooked D.L.J. to a ventilator and conducted various tests. A skeletal survey revealed that D.L.J. had three healing rib fractures on his right side, "a significant amount of retinal hemorrhages in the back of his eyes," and retinoschisis in his left eye, which occurs when blood builds up in the eyes until it "tears [the retinal] layers apart." Doctors determined that D.L.J. had no underlying genetic or hematology disorders that would have predisposed him to bleeding. Despite medical efforts, D.L.J. died on August 12, 2020.

After D.L.J.'s death, investigators interviewed Jefferson again and asked him to demonstrate using a doll to show how he shook D.L.J. Jefferson demonstrated by shaking the doll back and forth in a non-forceful manner. He told investigators that he stopped the shaking when D.L.J. appeared scared. The Commonwealth played several clips of this interview at trial. Jefferson admitted that he shook D.L.J. on August 9 about an hour prior to putting him in the car seat; he shook D.L.J. hard enough for D.L.J. to tense up, and his head snapped back "pretty hard." Jefferson demonstrated how he shook D.L.J. that day by grabbing the doll's jaw area and shaking it back and forth.

Dr. Terrell opined at trial that D.L.J. was already clinically dead when he arrived at Sovah. She testified that retinoschisis "is something you see in significant trauma" such as "either head trauma or a motor vehicle collision, crush head injury, or high-altitude fall." She concluded that severe shaking caused D.L.J.'s injuries and not the fall from the baby bouncer. According to Dr. Terrell, "a responsible caregiver who's appropriately caring for a baby would know immediately if they had caused this degree of injury to a child. It would not be consistent with normal rocking, bouncing, [or] playing."

A medical examiner performed D.L.J.'s autopsy with assistance from a forensic anthropologist and a neuropathologist. The doctors found that D.L.J.'s brain was swollen with bleeding around the brain and the swelling restricted oxygenation, which killed nerve cells in the brain. D.L.J.'s brain had both fresh bleeding from a recent injury and blood clotting that indicated older injuries. He had epidural, intradural, and subdural hemorrhaging and severe lesions throughout the brain. The neuropathologist testified that these injuries were acute and inflicted between twelve hours to four days of D.L.J. being declared brain dead. She opined that the injuries would be caused by significant blunt force to the head. She stated that it "[w]ould be very unusual" to see such injuries caused from a short fall but that "it really depends on the situation, the position of the head and things like that." The forensic anthropologist testified that D.L.J.'s ribs had been fractured two to three weeks earlier and that "it took quite a large amount of force to fracture those ribs," more than the force from a fall from a baby bouncer.

Based on these findings, the medical examiner concluded that "[a] considerable amount of force would be required to cause" D.L.J.'s injuries and stated that she "would not be surprised to see th[o]se injuries in something like a car crash scenario." She denied that a fall from a baby bouncer could have caused D.L.J.'s injuries. According to the medical examiner, the fatal injury was inflicted "around the time that [D.L.J.] was taken to the hospital and found unresponsive" and the effects would be evident "pretty immediately . . . right after the incident happened." D.L.J.'s injury would not be instantly fatal. The medical examiner recorded D.L.J.'s death as a homicide, specifically "[b]lunt force injuries of head in the setting of battered child syndrome."

The trial court denied Jefferson's motion to strike at the close of the Commonwealth's case. Thereafter, Jefferson testified in his own defense. When his counsel asked if Jefferson shook D.L.J. that day, Jefferson responded, "not viciously." Jefferson asserted that he "didn't shake him as hard as anybody thought." When asked what else might have caused D.L.J.'s injuries, he testified that D.L.J. had fallen off a couch at his godmother's house about two months before.

Jefferson argued that the Commonwealth failed to prove that he had abused D.L.J. and the Commonwealth failed to show a time, place, or causal connection between the alleged abuse and D.L.J.'s death sufficient to find him guilty of felony murder. The trial court found Jefferson guilty of child abuse and neglect based on a willful act but not an omission and found him guilty of felony murder. The trial court sentenced Jefferson to fifty years' imprisonment with twenty-five years suspended. This appeal follows.

ANALYSIS

Jefferson argues that the trial court erred in convicting him because there was insufficient evidence to prove that he abused D.L.J. He further asserts that, even if there was sufficient evidence to prove child abuse, the trial court should not have convicted him because there were insufficient time place, and causal connections between the abuse and D.L.J.'s death to support a felony murder conviction. We disagree and affirm the trial court's judgment.

"On review of the sufficiency of the evidence, 'the judgment of the trial court is presumed correct and will not be disturbed unless it is plainly wrong or without evidence to support it.'" Ingram v. Commonwealth, 74 Va.App. 59, 76 (2021) (quoting Smith v Commonwealth, 296 Va. 450, 460 (2018)). In such cases, "[t]he Court does not ask itself whether it believes that the evidence at the trial established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Secret v. Commonwealth, 296 Va. 204, 228 (2018) (alteration in original) (quoting Pijor v. Commonwealth, 294 Va. 502, 512 (2017)). "Rather, the relevant question is whether 'any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.'" Vasquez v. Commonwealth, 291 Va. 232, 248 (2016) (quoting Williams v. Commonwealth, 278 Va. 190, 193 (2009)). Evidence is not insufficient merely because there is no eyewitness to the crime. See Christian v. Commonwealth, 221 Va. 1078, 1082 (1981) ("Typically, child abuse is practiced by a parent in the privacy of the home with no one present but the victim[.]"). In...