Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010

Mother guilty of murder

Sherita McNeil, 25, said in a taped call she had only 'hate' for the 19-month-old toddler.

Sherita McNeil's own words persuaded jurors to return a guilty verdict in a case that evoked gruesome images of a toddler's body, wrapped in garbage bags and bleach-soaked sheets, decomposing in a bedroom closet.

Late Thursday afternoon, after two days of deliberations, a jury convicted McNeil, 25, of the first-degree murder of her 19-month-old son, DeVarion Gross, and then concealing his death for weeks.

Though some in the courtroom cried, McNeil showed little emotion as Judge Ripley Rand sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The defense immediately announced its intention to appeal the verdict.

"It's a very sad and tragic case," Melanie Shekita, the Wake County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said after the verdict. "There's nothing good about what the jury had to go through this week."

Jurors said it took them several days to reach their verdict because they wanted to carefully weigh the evidence in sequence.

Bryan Collins, the public defender who represented McNeil, tried to convince the jury that the death of DeVarion, whose nickname was "Poodie," was accidental, that he was jumping on the couch and fell and smacked his head.

McNeil did not call emergency dispatchers, Collins said, because she was afraid of the boy's father, Eric Chambers, a gang member serving time in state prison with many contacts on the outside.

But prosecutors said McNeil's account of what happened to her son conflicted with what medical examiner's reports showed.

Prosecutors used videotapes of McNeil talking with investigators shortly after DeVarion's body was discovered Nov. 14, 2008. They showed letters seized from the Garner apartment where the young mother and son had lived. They also played audiotapes of telephone calls between McNeil and Ira James, father of her older daughter.

In the letter found by Garner police, McNeil wrote that "hate" was "all" she had for DeVarion, that she didn't love him and "never" would.

Prosecutors said McNeil and James concocted a story after DeVarion's death to say she was raped by the boy's father and forced to keep the child for fear that Chambers might have her killed.

After closing arguments had been made and no more evidence was to be presented, jurors asked several times during their two days of deliberations to have tapes of the phone calls played again and again. From those tapes and the letter, jurors gathered several key pieces of evidence that led to their verdict.

McNeil told James over and over that she had done something to DeVarion, but did not elaborate on what she had done. She mentioned kicking and beating the boy, and James said in one call, "He gonna pop up eventually."

Because the boy's body was decomposed, medical examiners could not pinpoint the cause of death.

The defense brought in a forensic pathologist who testified that DeVarion could have died from a fall, though medical examiners testifying for the state deemed that unlikely because his broken ribs, in various stages of healing, would have made it painful and difficult for DeVarion to jump.

James Powers, a Cary resident on the jury, said the testimony of the medical examiner and forensic pathologist did not weigh much in their verdict.

"Since you have a case where you really don't know how the child died, you have to rely on her own words," Powers said.

Collins declined to comment afterward, as did McNeil's family.

Mary Brown, a juror from Raleigh, said she felt sorry for McNeil.

"She was blessed with this child, and she proceeded to abuse this child," Brown said. "Through her written words and verbal words, she did everything she could to hate him. She was beating up on him and beating up on him. ... I feel sorry for her that she was so devoid of human emotions."