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SMITH GUILTY IN CHILD DEATH

By Ray King/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 9:51 AM CDT

A Jefferson County Circuit Court jury late Tuesday evening returned a guilty verdict in the capital murder trial of Marcha Jarmane Smith, 20, of Pine Bluff in the death of a 2-year-old girl last year.

Since the state had waived the death penalty, the only punishment available was life in prison without parole. The panel deliberated about two hours before returning with the verdict.

Smith had pleaded innocent in the April 8, 2007, death of La’Niyah Beard, who was pronounced dead at Arkansas Children’s Hospital at Little Rock after being transferred from Jefferson Regional Medical Center where she was resuscitated twice.

The cause of death was listed as multiple blunt force trauma.

Before the defense began presenting the case Tuesday afternoon, Judge Berlin Jones allowed the state to recall Jasmine Martin, mother of the child, to testify about Smith’s age.

To sustain the charge of capital murder, the state had to prove that Smith was over the age of 18 and “knowingly caused the death of a person under the age of 14 under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.”

Despite objections from the defense, Martin, 17, who was Smith’s former girlfriend, said she knew Smith was 19 at the time of her daughter’s death, having gone to a birthday party for him in January 2007.

“He told me his age,” Martin said.

Testifying in his own defense, Smith, who was the only witness called by the defense, claimed he picked up La’Niyah at about 8 p.m., and took her back to the house he shared with his mother on South Belair Drive.

Smith told Deputy Public Defender Tim Bunch, who with Public Defender Buck Fikes represented the defendant, that later in the evening, he went outside to smoke a cigarette and when he opened the door to go back in the house, the door hit the toddler in the mouth, causing a busted lip.

“I wiped the blood with a shirt, then took her to the bathroom where I got some tissues and cleaned her up,” Smith said.

Before the state rested Tuesday, prosecutors called Victoria Laine of the state Crime Laboratory, who testified that blood and semen were found on a tissue in a trash can that matched both La’Niyah and Smith.

Prosecutors did not charge Smith with sexual assault in the case.

Smith told the jury he put the toddler in his bed between 9:30 and 10 p.m., then went to bed himself at about 3:15 a.m., and had no contact with La’Niyah until about 5 a.m., when she woke him up, saying she needed to go to the bathroom.“I picked her up and put her on the commode and when she didn’t do anything, I went back and sat on the bed and fell back to sleep,” he said, adding that the toddler’s mother later called and woke him up, asking when he was going to bring her daughter back.

On Monday, Martin testified that she called Smith a number of times that night and into the morning, asking him to bring La’Niyah back, and in his testimony, Smith confirmed that, saying that Martin had called him “about five times.”

“She wasn’t in my bed and wasn’t in my mother’s bed, so I went to the living room and saw her laying half on and half off the couch,” Smith testified. “The front door was cracked and I knew she couldn’t open the door and told her to go back to bed, which she did.”

Later, he testified, the child slipped and fell in the kitchen, striking her head. Smith said he took her to the bathtub to clean her up and she “leaned back against the tub, took a deep breath, and her head dropped down.”

He said the toddler didn’t appear to be breathing and when he couldn’t find a pulse, yelled for his brother, who went outside and contacted a neighbor who drove Smith and La’Niyah to the emergency room.

On cross-examination, Smith admitted to Deputy Prosecutor Maxie Kizer that from the time he picked up La’Niyah at about 8 p.m. until the girl was taken to the hospital at about 9 a.m., she was with him exclusively.

Using a set of photographs prepared by the state Medical Examiner’s Office, Kizer, who with Chief Deputy Prosecutor Kyle Hunter and Deputy Prosecutor Rik Ramsey represented the state, asked Smith to explain how the toddler sustained injuries that included contusions and abrasions all over her body and an abrasive pattern on her back and legs.

“I don’t know,” Smith replied to each photo.

When Kizer showed Smith a photo of the toddler’s severe skull fracture, Smith said he “guessed that was when she fell.”

“Didn’t you hear the medical examiner say that was not possible?” Kizer asked, making reference to testimony Tuesday morning by Dr. Adam Craig who said the type of injuries sustained by La’Niyah could not have been caused by a fall on the floor as the defense claimed.

“It would take more force that a fall to cause those kind of injuries because she was already low to the ground anyway,” Craig told Kizer, adding that the force that could cause the skull fracture would have required a fall from a “two or three story building or in an automobile crash.”

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