DeKalb jury: man didn't kill tot

A week's worth of testimony established that Hood was the only grown-up around the night Maya was hit. So Hood's attorney, Corinne M. Mull, pinned the blame on his three children, who were ages 3 to 5 at the time and were sharing the apartment with their tiny half sister.

The jury found Hood not guilty of cruelty to children, aggravated assault, felony murder and malice murder.

The mother of the four children, Monique Johnson, left the courtroom after the verdict and fell to the ground screaming, Mull said. "Now she's got to deal with where to put the finger of blame," said Mull, who had argued that her client was the victim of a shoddy investigation and a lying mother trying to hide the identity of the real killer.

The office of DeKalb County District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming stood its ground after Tuesday's decision. "An investigation was done, and there was no evidence to indicate the kids had harmed the child," spokesman Orzy Theus said.

The day before, during closing arguments in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Clarence F. Seeliger, prosecutor Harold Buckler had shown jurors a medical photograph of Maya's destroyed internal organs. He noted how doctors said she was hit with such a terrible force that it caused "almost an explosion" in her belly, and said it was unreasonable to believe another child could inflict such damage. He acknowledged that the older three kids were at times unruly but ridiculed Hood for shifting the blame to them.

"As much as you say bad things about them," Buckler said Monday, "they're not the killers."

But Hood's attorney reminded jurors how doctors had found bruises and scars on Maya that could have been inflicted before Hood moved into the home. He was not married to Johnson and was serving time for aggravated assault and arson after fathering the first three children, according to DeKalb court records. He returned a couple of months before Maya's death.

Johnson, the mother, had gone out for the evening, leaving Hood in charge. He claimed to have been asleep for a good chunk of the time. Mull, the chief trial attorney for the DeKalb County Public Defender's office, said that's when Maya's bigger siblings might have pounced. One of the boys had been booted from day care after he kicked a child in the head, she noted, and another was removed from a bus after kicking a boy in the face.

Mull also noted that one of the children had previously jumped off a piece of furniture and onto Maya’s stomach and that her pancreas had been scarred by an earlier blow. Mull said it was possible one of the children slammed into Maya’s stomach again that night nearly three years ago, inflicting the fatal injury on a weakened organ. “Somebody ruptured that child’s ... pancreas area before Rodney came into the picture,” Mull told the mostly male jury. “Most likely that person is the one who also did it the second time around.”

Johnson was a key witness for the prosecution, and the defense worked to discredit her. During the trial, Johnson testified that Hood took money and fled the morning Maya was found dead. Buckler acknowledged that Johnson didn't "seem to me to be a very good mother," but he said that didn't mean she lied about what happened. Johnson had gone on Maury Povich's tell-all TV talk show in a failed attempt to establish the identity of Maya's father. She'd failed to protect Maya after the tot suffered bruises. And she'd lost custody of the older three children, who are in a foster home and in the process of being adopted, because she'd failed to satisfy requirements imposed by state caseworkers. But Buckler told jurors that Johnson's testimony was honest and aimed at one thing: "She wants the person who committed this crime to pay."