A 24-year-old Mabelvale man who said he accidentally inflicted head injuries on a 3-month-old infant by falling on her was convicted Tuesday of deliberately injuring the baby girl.
Henry Gadsden Jr. admitted in court that he had lied to police, doctors and the baby's mother about how the infant got hurt last March while he was baby-sitting her and his own 21-month-old daughter in Little Rock.
But he promised Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza that he was coming clean on the witness stand, telling the judge that he only lied about what happened because he feared authorities would take custody of the injured girl.
But the judge concluded the three-hour trial by saying he didn't believe Gadsden's latest version of events, finding him guilty as charged with first-degree battery of a child, which carries a minimum 10-year prison sentence.
Piazza said Gadsden's claim about a fall would not explain how the girl suffered skull fractures on both sides of her head.
"I consider that [testimony] to be another story he made up in a series of stories," Piazza said.
The judge said he was impressed by the testimony of "remarkable witness" Dr. Rachel Clingenpeel, a pediatrician at Arkansas Children's Hospital and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who specializes in child abuse.
Questioned by deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones, Clingenpeel said the injuries to the baby's head were inflicted by "some sort of major traumatic event" that would have caused immediate pain to the child and would be instantly obvious.
"It's not something that could not go unnoticed in normal infant care," she said. "It would be unmissable to anyone who witnessed it."
The girl's cranial bones on her left and right sides were fractured, although the left side was the more serious, she testified. Describing how she examined the infant, Clingenpeel said she felt a "soft squishy area" on the left side of the girl's head, describing that injury as a "big crack" as wide as her finger.
"I could actually feel the fracture," she testified.
CT scans and an MRI showed bleeding on the brain, with doctors also finding evidence of older brain injuries, although Clingenpeel said those injuries could have occurred in the womb. The girl was born two months premature.
A typical household fall for a baby would not produce the force necessary to hurt the girl like that, the doctor said.
The truth, Gadsden said, was that he dropped the baby while carrying her into the kitchen to get her a bottle. His daughter got underfoot and he fell, dropping the infant. He said his hand pressed down on her head when he tried to break his fall.
"I tripped and she fell out of my hands," he said. "I tried to catch myself and my hand ended up on her head. My hand kind of got on her head and I put pressure on it."
Gadsden said that even though he has six children, March 13 was the first time he's ever had to supervise two children that young. He said he immediately texted the baby's mother, who was at school. He said the baby started crying and would not be calmed with milk or a bath.
Gadsden admitting to lying to the child's mother, 19-year-old Jimmia Leeann Green, for several weeks about what had actually happened.
Between the injury and his arrest 11 days later, Gadsden variously claimed that his daughter had fallen on her, she had fallen off the bed or the baby had been dropped from a kitchen counter by the older child while he was trying to take their picture.
He testified that he didn't tell authorities the truth because Green's grandmother had scared the couple about the authorities taking the baby away. He said he told Green the truth after he was arrested. The couple are now the parents of a 6-week-old child.
"I was scared. I didn't want nobody to think I had harmed her," he said. "We just decided to keep our mouths closed until court to avoid any more escalation. The only reason I told those lies was to prevent [the baby] from being took."
Defense attorney Danny Williams argued that authorities had taken advantage of both Gadsden and Green to charge him.
Green told the judge the couple took the baby to the emergency room that night because she couldn't get the baby to stop crying, saying the infant sounded like she was hurting. Doctors examined the girl and released her that same night.
Green said her daughter seemed fine after the hospital visit. She told the judge she suspected that Gadsden had actually dropped the girl, but does not believe he deliberately hurt her. The girl's father is gone, but Gadsden stepped up like a "father figure," she said.
"He basically did everything a father would do," Green testified, describing how Gadsden regularly bathed, fed and dressed the girl. "Being honest, I never felt like he harmed her on purpose."
Green also denied ever telling anyone that Gadsden had kicked the girl. She said she had called the UAMS neonatal intensive care unit to get advice on what to do for her daughter but said she never said anything about the baby being kicked.
Child-care authorities took an interest in the girl's welfare after a receptionist in the neonatal intensive care unit told her supervisors that on the same day Green took her daughter to the emergency room she had taken a call from a woman who said her boyfriend had kicked her infant daughter.
The caller did not give her name or the name of the boyfriend, Cynthia Fields, a UAMS patient service coordinator, told the judge. But the woman did provide the name of Green's daughter, and she also knew the dates and times for when the girl had been in the hospital's neonatal unit.
Fields said she put the caller on hold to find her a nurse to talk to but the call ended before she could check the caller ID.
Green took the girl to Children's Hospital for an examination by Clingenpeel the morning after the ER visit, after an investigator with the Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division contacted her and arranged the exam.
Metro on 02/15/2018