The parents of the badly abused infant known as Baby Dinah agreed on Wednesday to remove her from life support, a decision that could mean the charges against the baby's father escalate to murder.
The dramatic agreement followed an unusual five-minute meeting prompted by Justin Whited, who asked to speak to Jamie Cason Whited at the Walton County Courthouse where a hearing was underway to determine the fate of Dinah Paige Whited. The baby, all but 5 months old, has been on life support for about three months.
Dinah, who doctors testified is in a vegetative state without hope of recovery, could be removed on Friday from the ventilator that is keeping her alive. She is in the pediatric intensive care unit of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston.
"I'm happy and sad," said the infant's maternal grandmother Paige Cason-Barret, after the decision. She said she felt sad about losing her granddaughter, but felt it was unfair for Dinah to be "half here" and half in heaven. "Give her her little angel wings."
The court summit between the mother and father came at the last minute of the daylong hearing in juvenile court, during which Justin Whited stood alone in opposing the removal of the baby from the ventilator beside her tiny hospital bed.
It was after that meeting that he changed his mind and acquiesced to removing the child from life support.
Both parents appeared in court on Wednesday wearing arm and leg shackles and jail jumpsuits, his dark blue and hers pink. Despite sitting near each other at the same courtroom table, they studiously avoided looking at each other.
At one point they both began to softly cry as a video was shown of Dinah in the hospital. She was motionless with several tubes and wires keeping her alive. The video showed a nurse having to rotate her and change her position periodically because she does not move.
Justin Whited has been charged with assaulting the girl so badly she suffered bleeding on the brain, two broken collar bones and breaks in every rib but three. Jamie Cason Whited has been charged with child cruelty, asserting she failed to protect her child.
Both parents assert they did not abuse the child.
As the end of the six-hour hearing neared, Juvenile Court Judge David Dickinson expressed mixed feelings, saying he was inclined to grant a motion filed by Dinah’s court-appointed attorney seeking to remove the child from life support, but he wasn’t sure whether he had the legal authority to do so. He said there was no direct precedent for the case in Georgia law. Dickinson suggested he might need to ask the Georgia Supreme Court to consider the case.
The case raised a number of legal and ethical questions, key among them whether the father charged with abusing her should have final say in whether she remained on life support. The parents' agreement overcame that issue, but left the legal question unresolved.
Dinah's court-appointed attorney Jessica Van Hall had submitted the motion last week asking the court to order the child's removal from life support. She asserted that Justin Whited could not separate his own interests from those of his child. Essentially, when Dinah dies, the charges against him could rise to murder.
Doctors at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston had thought they might remove the child from life support about two weeks ago, but one of the tests revealed a little blood flow in her brain. That halted their plans.
During Wednesday’s hearing, CHOA Dr. Matthew Paden said the child is on the thin line between being in a vegetative state and being legally brain dead. Among her injuries, she suffered a massive head injury with “very, very severe brain damage,” he said.
She has, he added, a “tiny amount of brain function,” meaning there is a “tiny amount of blood flow at the most bottom part of the brain.”
He stressed, "She is not going to get any better. She is not going to recover from this."
Both sets of grandparents, maternal and paternal, agreed that the child should be removed from life support.
The judge tentatively set Friday as the day when Dinah would be removed from the ventilator. He needs to first check that the sheriff’s office can transport the mother and father securely to Egleston for their final visit.
Doctors told Cason-Barrett, the baby’s maternal grandmother, that once Dinah is removed from the apparatus, she could die anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours after.
The girl's paternal grandmother, Kimberlee Page, said afterward, "I'm just glad Dinah will be at peace."
She said her son Justin was happy that the judge said he could visit the baby for a half-hour before doctors removed the ventilator tube.
When Judge Dickinson asked the couple whether they would like to see their child together for the last time, Jamie Cason Whited uttered her only word during the proceeding.
“Separately,” she said.
