The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday upheld the murder conviction and life sentence of an Atlanta woman who killed a 16-month-old while babysitting eight years ago.
In a unanimous decision, the high court concluded that “the evidence was sufficient to authorize a jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt” that Mary Ann Spence was guilty of killing Samuel Miller in April 2011, Justice Michael P. Boggs wrote in the decision.
The woman, who was 48 at the time, was convicted in January 2012 in Fulton County of murder, aggravated assault and child cruelty. Spence, who was babysitting the toddler and two other children, was sentenced to life without parole.
Spence’s appeals attorney, Edward Silverbach, argued that the case depended entirely on circumstantial evidence and did not exclude every reasonable hypothesis of her innocence, including that the child’s death could have been the result of a preexisting physical ailment or hard fall, according to a news release.
The high court disagreed, saying Spence’s 5-year-old grandson testified that he saw his grandmother pick up the crying toddler and slam him on a bed, which caused his eyes “to sleep.”
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“That was direct evidence of Spence’s guilt,” Monday’s opinion said. Also, “the jury was presented with ample circumstantial evidence on which to conclude that she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of murder, and also that her hypotheses of innocence were unreasonable.”
Spence was staying with her daughter and three grandchildren, ages 9, 5 and 1, at a Carver Homes apartment. Her daughter’s best friend, Jennifer Miller, was also staying there with her two children: Samuel Miller and his 3-year-old sister.
On April 3, after Spence’s daughter went to work and Jennifer Miller was preparing to go to church, Spence offered to watch three of the children, according to the release. At about 12:45 p.m., she ran to an apartment across the hall and told the resident that Samuel was not breathing.
The resident and another neighbor went to the apartment, found Samuel lying motionless on a futon in the living room and tried to resuscitate him while Spence called 911. The child was pronounced dead at a hospital.
During the investigation, Spence told an officer she had been cleaning in another room and heard Samuel crying. She returned to the living room and assumed he had bumped his head on a table, the release said. She said she put him down for a nap and then found him unresponsive and foaming at the mouth about an hour later.
Spence was not considered a suspect until the autopsy ruled that blunt force trauma to the head caused Samuel’s death. The medical examiner said the skull fracture was caused by a force consistent with a fall from a two-story window onto a concrete sidewalk.
Spence’s counsel argued to the high court that the trial court should not have allowed four witnesses to testify about what her 5-year-old grandson told them in the weeks following the death, according to the release. The attorney also argued that the judge failed to instruct the jury about the possibility of an accident.
The Supreme Court sided with the trial court.
“Even if Spence could show that the trial court obviously erred in not charging the jury as to the defense of accident,” the decision said, “she has failed to carry her burden of demonstrating that any such error likely affected the outcome of her case.”
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