By John Lynch
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Attorneys for a Little Rock man accused of murdering a toddler told a Pulaski County jury Tuesday that the boy’s death was an accident, stemming from brain injuries unintentionally inflicted by their client. The child’s wounds were made worse by the mistakes of the ambulance crew that rushed the little boy to the hospital, they said.
Defense attorneys Sharon Kiel and Joe Tobler cautioned the jury in the capital murder trial of 27-year-old Alex Martin Blueford against convicting their client because they think someone should be punished for the November 2007 death of 20-month-old Matthew Jermaine McFadden Jr.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Blueford, saying the toddler’s brain injuries were comparable to wounds he would have received if he had been in a car crash or dropped off a building.
The trial is scheduled to run through Thursday, with proceedings set to resume at 9 a.m. today.
In her opening statements, Kiel told jurors that Blueford wasn’t initially honest with investigators about how the toddler, nicknamed “Fat Man” by his family, came to be fatally injured almost three years ago. Police and rescuers were called to the family home after Blueford reported finding the boy unconscious and barely breathing, saying he thought the toddler had fallen asleep after jumping on the bed.
“What happened on Nov. 28, 2007, was an accident or negligence,” Kiel said. “Actions do speak louder than words and our client lied to police.” The boy was hurt, Kiel said, when Blueford “reflexively elbowed” the toddler into a chair after Matthew nearly burned Blueford in the eye with a cigarette.
Blueford initially claimed ignorance of the toddler’s injuries, blaming the injuries on Matthew’s mother, Kimberly Tolbert, before eventually telling police he had inadvertently struck the boy. But a mistake doesn’t make Blueford guilty of capital murder, Kiel said, saying the defense would give a voice to the dead boy.
“All we want is for the truth to come out and the truth is the defense,” she said, showing photographs of the toddler playing with his father and also connected to a ventilator in the hospital. “We want to remember why we’re here and we can speak for him.” Kiel called on jurors to be suspicious of the doctors who are testifying for the prosecution, saying years of treating seriously hurt and fatally injured children had cost them their objectivity.
“If they are sounding like a cop ... smelling like a cop ... and wearing a stethoscope, they are still trying to put these [handcuffs] on my client,” she said. “We are not saying Alex was not responsible for Fat Man’s death. We are submitting he is not guilty of capital murder. There was no deliberate intent to harm this boy.” Kiel argued that emergency medical personnel who transported the unconscious toddler to the hospital improperly administered a breathing tube, worsening Matthew’s brain injuries through a lack of oxygen.
Rhonda Dick and Michelle Moss, the doctors who treated the boy at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, both testified that Kiel’s theory was possible, but both said they couldn’t say how likely it was or whether the ambulance crew had made mistakes.
Moss said the toddler was in a “deep coma” with irregular breathing that indicated fatal brain damage. From the amount of bleeding in his brain and the blood showing in his eyes, she testified, his injuries were more like the result of abuse and more comparable to injuries he would have suffered if he had been thrown from a moving car and landed on his head.
To challenge Moss’ testimony, Kiel produced a 25-pound bag of birdseed to stand in for the toddler, who weighed about 27 pounds, questioning how the toddler could suffer brain damage with no bruising.
“How do you shake 12.5 kilos of child?” Kiel asked.
The petite Moss demonstrated by shaking the bag, but after deputy prosecutor Will Jones raised the bag over his head and mimicked throwing the boy onto a bed, Moss said that version of the boy’s injuries better accounted for the fatal wounds.
“If I was to take this and sling it, it would not be very good for this child,” the prosecutor said.
Jones told jurors that Blueford’s lies about how the boy came to be injured hampered doctors’ efforts to treat the boy.
“They’re not getting anything out of this man here but `I don’t know ... he just went to sleep,’” the prosecutor said. “When things happened to Fat Man, there was only one man in the room.”
Copyright 2009 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.