At almost six months old, Divinity Williams couldn't sit up, roll over or walk so when the baby showed up at the emergency room with a freshly broken left arm, authorities got suspicious.
The injury required surgery and the resulting examination at Arkansas Children's Hospital showed the infant had 12 more fractured bones in both her arms, leg and ribs, all but one of which had been inflicted within the past two weeks.
Looking for the cause of her injuries, Little Rock police turned to the man who had brought Divinity to the hospital, arresting her 30-year-old father, D'Juan Cornilius Williams of Little Rock, after he told investigators the child had not been alone with another adult during that time.
Wednesday, a Pulaski County jury deliberated just less than two hours to find the father of three guilty as charged with first-degree battery, a Class Y felony that carries a potential life sentence when the victim is a child. At the recommendation of the seven men and five women, Circuit Judge Karen Whatley sentenced Williams to seven years in prison.
"Her broken little body told you what happened to her," deputy prosecutor Beth Kanopsic said in closing arguments, urging jurors to convict.
An authority on child abuse from Children's, Dr. Rachel Clingenpeel, who diagnosed Divinity as an abuse victim, told jurors the baby had no genetic conditions that could account for her broken bones, stating that the little girl had suffered "multiple traumas to multiple different locations" on her body.
No ordinary household accident could account for the injuries, the pediatrician said. Rough handling by her two older toddler siblings also could not have hurt the baby like that either because those children were not strong enough to break bones, Clingenpeel said.
There would have been no hiding the baby's injuries, the doctor said. Those bone-breaking incidents would have been painful and Divinity would have immediately cried out then continued to suffer long-term discomfort, the doctor testified.
Authorities looked no further than Williams because there was no one else to look at, especially once police determined he'd waited close to a day to get medical treatment for the baby, deputy prosecutor Alexa Vetsch said.
"He waited and waited to take her to the hospital," she said. "The only explanation is Mr. Williams. He violently harmed his six-month-old baby, repeatedly and traumatically."
Williams told police when he brought his daughter to the hospital in October 2018 that he had not harmed the girl. Testifying for 38 minutes on Wednesday, he continued to maintain he had nothing to do with her injuries. He told jurors he was a loving and attentive father who would never hurt his children.
Williams said he realized something was wrong with the baby after she woke up early crying, describing how he consulted by phone with his sister in Tennessee about how to soothe her when he couldn't calm her on his own.
He said Divinity's left arm was swollen, which he thought might have been caused by her sleeping on it but he realized she was badly hurt when he moved the arm and felt a "crunch," although he never saw any other injuries, Williams said, telling jurors he was shocked when he found out the extent of how badly hurt the baby was.
He'd been on his own with the children for about two weeks by then because his wife, their mother, Darica Williams, now 30, had left them, D'Juan Williams testified.
Williams, who's never been in serious trouble with the law before, said he was eager to cooperate with police so detectives could find out how his daughter was injured.
"I wanted them to know I wasn't hiding anything," Williams said. "Their minds were made up that I was lying."
He said police misunderstood him when he described how he was caring for the children, telling jurors that he did not mean that he was the only adult to be around her. Williams said there had been other grownups in her life, like a neighbor who sometimes babysat.
Further, he and the children had recently spent a week with his family in Detroit. He said the children had been seen by Michigan doctors because he had considered moving the family and enrolling the children in daycare there.
Defense attorney Darrell Brown, with co-counsel Camille Wright, denounced the police probe as a rush to judgment based on detectives misunderstanding what Williams had been trying to tell them. Brown told jurors they should expect a better job from police who never even checked with the Michigan doctors.
"There was no real investigation," he told the jurors. "When you're investigating something as serious as child battery, why don't you do the best investigation you can? Or at least a mediocre [investigation]?"
Wednesday's verdict comes about 11 months after a mistrial in May when a previous jury failed to reach the required unanimous verdict after three hours of deliberations, splitting 9-3 in favor of conviction.