MS Coast jury convicts stepfather of capital murder in deadly child abuse of toddler
A Harrison County jury took 45 minutes Thursday to convict Joseph David Heard of capital murder in the beating and suffocation death of his 2-year-old stepson.
Afterward, Judge Larry Bourgeois polled the jury to confirm the verdict.
The jury will return Friday to determine whether to sentence Heard, 41, to life in prison without parole or death for the Dec 27, 2021, killing of 2-year-old Hayden Lee Bataille.
Heard’s wife, Hailey Lynn Bataille Heard, 24, is already serving a life sentence in her son’s murder.
The morning of the toddler’s death, Joseph David Heard repeatedly punched the toddler in the gut and the head, and when the toddler cried out in pain, his mother said, the beating only escalated.
Joseph David Heard was already angry that morning, two days after Christmas 2021, because the toddler with curly blond hair had soiled his diapers overnight.
The torture began when Heard felt like the child took too long to get a juice box out of the refrigerator after his bath.
Hayden’s cries ended only after his mother said she later walked into the living room of their one-bedroom apartment, where the boy’s stepfather was still beating the child. She testified that she put her hand over her child’s mouth and nose, hoping he would stop crying and the beating would end.
Hayden turned blue and slipped from consciousness. He died of suffocation.
Denials and banana peels for bruising
Earlier Thursday, Heard testified in his defense and repeatedly denied abusing the child. Instead, he said he walked into the living room, saw the little boy wasn’t breathing and started performing CPR on him to save him.
Heard denied any culpability in the crime or any of the abuse, even testifying that he never saw the first bruise on Hayden’s body the day of the toddler’s death.
But in body camera footage from Biloxi police at the couple’s home, Heard acknowledges the bruising and talks about how Hayden likes to play rough.
Heard said he had seen bruising on the child in the past, but his wife told him the toddler had fallen off a bed or a couch.
As Heard kept up his denials, prosecutors pointed out how a forensic review of his phone showed how he had searched online for ways to make bruises go away. When Heard thought he had found a remedy, he texted his wife to tell her they could use banana peels to make them go away faster.
Attorney claims mom killed child
An autopsy showed the toddler had bruises — both old and new — all over his face, his head, his abdomen, his back, and his legs, plus old and new broken bones and more.
Joseph David Heard’s attorney, Donald Rafferty, maintains that Hailey Heard caused the toddler’s death when she put her hand over his mouth, suffocating him.
Assistant District Attorneys George Huffman and Mara Joffe are prosecuting the death penalty case this week before Judge Larry Bourgeois.
In opening arguments, Joffe told the jury that Hailey Heard had been the victim of repeated domestic violence by Heard and how her son’s torture and abuse at the hands of his stepfather was a repeat occurrence during the couple’s one-year relationship.
“This is a case about control,” Joffe said. “It’s about this defendant, Joseph David Heard, controlling his wife Hailey Heard and his 2-year-old stepson Hayden through violence, through abuse, and through torture.”
The torture and abuse that Hailey Heard and her son suffered, Joffe said, “was not isolated but was prolonged.”
“They had to do things his way or face punishment,” she said.
A 911 call, child abuse and toddler covered in bruises
When a 911 call came in that morning about an unresponsive child, authorities said the cause was first reported as a possible drowning.
But when Biloxi police, firefighters, and paramedics with American Medical Response responded to the call on St. Mary Boulevard, they found the child fully clothed and lying on the living floor. The child was not wet, Biloxi police said.
When AMR paramedic Mark Dillard arrived, he said Hayden wasn’t moving, then gasped for air twice and stopped breathing.
Dillard said that he noticed extensive bruising on the toddler but kept doing what he could to revive the child.
A firefighter carried Hayden to the waiting ambulance, and AMR rushed the child down the street to Merit Health hospital in Biloxi.
‘Most horrific scene’
The emergency room physician, Dr. Leanne Lee, said she attempted additional life-saving measures on Hayden before pronouncing him dead around 7 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2021.
“It was one of the most horrific scenes I’ve witnessed as an ER doctor,” Lee said. “I had never seen a kid that had sustained so much trauma.”
Lee described the extensive bruising on Hayden’s body, along with broken bones in different stages of healing, a burn mark and more.
The state medical examiner, Dr. Staci Turner, said an autopsy showed the child died due to suffocation but had also sustained other significant injuries, including swelling in his head.
At the trial, Biloxi police read aloud pages of text messages between Heard and his wife. In them, he often sounded off about how Hayden had done something wrong and how he planned to exact his punishment on the child.
On some occasions, Hailey Heard said, Joseph David Heard punished the child by making him stand up and move his arms up and down repeatedly for hours at a time.
At other times, she said, Joseph David Heard made Hayden sit on his potty chair for hours because the child had soiled his diaper.
When Hayden got in trouble at other times, Joseph David Heard told his wife he was going to hit her son’s hand, which had a second-degree burn, with a rubber spatula.
The exchanges included repeated threats from Joseph David Heard to divorce his wife. She begged him to stay, although she was the one who worked and paid the bills.
