Deliberation in child abuse trial continues into Thursday evening

May 2—A Jasper County jury deliberated late into the day Thursday in an effort to reach a verdict in the child abuse trial of Hunter Kelley.

The 25-year-old Carthage man is accused of abusing his 2-month-old daughter Amelia Kelley by shaking her on Sept. 2 and Sept. 12, 2020, and further endangering her by failing to seek immediate medical attention when she purportedly stopped breathing the first time.

Jurors received the case shortly before noon Thursday following closing arguments in the four-day trial in Jasper County Circuit Court. At press time, the verdict was still not available.

Instructions Judge Gayle Crane read to the jury before they retired provided misdemeanor options to both the felony abuse counts Kelley was facing.

Assistant Prosecutor Scott Watson reminded jurors during closing arguments Thursday morning that they had heard the interview in which Kelley admitted to detectives that he lost his cool and shook his daughter on both dates.

Watson said the various medical illness explanations the defense was asking the jury to believe in lieu of Amelia's treating physicians' diagnosis of nonaccidental head trauma — that she had pneumonia, thin blood and chronic subdural hemorrhaging predisposing her to deep vein blood clotting in her brain — were being offered up by medical experts who never treated the girl.

"Mercy Springfield ordered the tests to rule out everything else before (the defendant) confessed," Watson told jurors.

The prosecution called Dr. James Anderst of Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City as a rebuttal witness prior to closing arguments. Anderst, a pediatrician certified in child abuse pediatrics and an expert on bleeding disorders, testified that his review of Amelia's records and scans convinced him that she "was damaged by violent trauma."

He said magnetic resonance venograms conducted at both the Springfield hospital and Children's Mercy, where she later was transferred, showed no clotting in veins or presence of old blood in Amelia's brain, indicative of the chronic subdural bleeding that Dr. Dale Vaslow, an expert witness called by the defense, testified he found in his review of the girl's medical records.

Watson asked Anderst if a statement another defense witness, Dr. Roland Auer, had made during testimony Wednesday — that you can't shake a baby and not injure their neck or spine — had any validity. Anderst said it certainly did not in his experience of handling and supervising the care of thousands of injured children.

"Why would someone say that?" Watson asked.

"I don't know," Anderst replied.

He said Vaslow is fairly "alone" in the medical profession in his thinking on nonaccidental head trauma and child abuse.

Watson had elicited testimony from the defense's medical experts as to what they were being paid for their testimony — $400 per hour, including their review of records, preparation of their findings and testimony in court.

"If they don't say what (the defense) needs them to say, they don't get paid," Watson told the jury.

Watson reminded them that the defendant had testified Wednesday that he continued to believe he had harmed his daughter until he read the report of Vaslow's opining that she had suffered a venous stroke.

Defense attorney Jacqueline Jimenez defended the expert witnesses she called to testify Wednesday as the professionals who do the research and write the papers that inform others in the medical field, "the people who are educating these doctors." She reminded jurors that those witnesses had pointed out the evidence of viral infection and clots on Amelia's scans.

"Trust me: They (Amelia's treating physicians) didn't run every test available," Jimenez said.

Their diagnosis of nonaccidental head trauma has no basis in science and "exists only in the realm of fantasy," she argued.

Jimenez said Amelia's treating physicians and police had already made up their minds that she was abused and were looking for someone to blame when police interviewed Kelley at the hospital. But none of the state's witnesses could testify that Amelia was actually shaken, she said.

She argued that her client's "admission" that he shook Amelia was obtained under intense pressure from police during which Kelley was made to feel that he needed to admit wrongdoing if his daughter was to receive the medical care she needed. But it was a false confession, she said. He was just "creating a narrative for them to believe."

Watson had asked jurors not to forget that they "sit in the seat of justice for Amelia Kelley." At the end of his rebuttal of the defense's closing, he told the jury he wanted to introduce the child who should be the focus of their attention and matter much "more than just a court exhibit."

Lauren Bonnett, the girl's mother, then brought Amelia, the child not expected to live past the age of 5, into the courtroom in a wheelchair for the jury to see her condition today.