PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Holt maintains that Leah Mullinix, a woman Bowie met three weeks prior to Dante falling unconscious, routinely abused the boy and lied about it. She beat the boy, Holt said, put makeup on him to cover injuries, and then left him in Bowie’s care where the boy choked on an animal cracker and later died. According to the defense, choking on the animal cracker deprived Dante’s brain of oxygen, which exacerbated a subdural hematoma — ripping of blood vessels in his brain that caused bleeding. Holt lambasted the York City Police Department’s investigation into the death, criticizing them for gathering only what they felt they needed to prove Bowie killed Dante, and not necessarily all the facts that could construct the truth of what occurred. “I don’t need them, he’s already guilty,” Detective-Sergeant Kyle Hower told acquaintances who offered possible evidence that could help Bowie’s defense. “Arrogance and incompetence is what led us here,” Holt said of Hower. The prosecution “is going to say Leah is not on trial here. And they’re right. But she should be.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Boy's mother - not the man charged in his death - should be on trial, lawyer says," by Reporter Jonathan Bergmueller, published by PennLive on December 30, 2022.
GIST: "A defense attorney in a criminal trial does not need to prove who actually committed the crime.
They merely need to cast reasonable doubt over accusations their client did the crime.
Yet after four weeks of testimony, attorney Farley Holt said he felt he upheld his promise to prove his client, Tyree Bowie, not only did not kill 2-year-old Dante Mullinix in York — but that Leah Mullinix, the boy’s mother, did.
“If there ever has been a case where there’s reasonable doubt, this is the case,” Holt told jurors during closing arguments Thursday.
Holt and his counterpart, prosecutor Tim Barker, spent Thursday sparring one last time during closing arguments in the trial against Bowie, 43, who Barker said mortally wounded the boy the evening of Sept. 6, 2018.
A jury will enter the York County Courthouse Friday morning to begin deliberations.
Holt maintains that Leah Mullinix, a woman Bowie met three weeks prior to Dante falling unconscious, routinely abused the boy and lied about it. She beat the boy, Holt said, put makeup on him to cover injuries, and then left him in Bowie’s care where the boy choked on an animal cracker and later died.
According to the defense, choking on the animal cracker deprived Dante’s brain of oxygen, which exacerbated a subdural hematoma — ripping of blood vessels in his brain that caused bleeding.
Holt lambasted the York City Police Department’s investigation into the death, criticizing them for gathering only what they felt they needed to prove Bowie killed Dante, and not necessarily all the facts that could construct the truth of what occurred.
“I don’t need them, he’s already guilty,” Detective-Sergeant Kyle Hower told acquaintances who offered possible evidence that could help Bowie’s defense.
“Arrogance and incompetence is what led us here,” Holt said of Hower. The prosecution “is going to say Leah is not on trial here. And they’re right. But she should be.”
Barker focused on constructing a timeline of the events of Sept. 6, through witnesses and video taken at the locations Dante, Leah and Bowie visited in the hours before he collapsed. He sought to highlight different times where Dante appeared to be uninjured to prove Bowie was the only person in a position to inflict fatal injuries.
Dante did not show obvious signs of injury until after the last visit he and Bowie made to Rutters, according to Barker. So if he did have injuries before then, Bowie was the only person who could have seen them, and was negligent for not getting the boy help, Barker said.
Holt and Barker discussed the testimony of medical experts in the trial, both shifting the facts of those statements to suit different narratives.
Holt said forensic pathologist Wayne Ross, child abuse expert Lori Frasier and forensic pathologist David Fowler all agreed with his narrative that Dante suffered from subdural hematoma, an injury where the blood vessels connected to the brain sheer and break, which is exacerbated by hypoxia—a lack of oxygen. According to Holt, the lack of oxygen from choking on the animal cracker sent Dante into cardiac arrest.
However, Barker said Dante suffered from a brain injury known as diffuse axonal trauma, which is when the head suffers a significant enough blow to cause a shockwave through the skull, based on testimony from prosecution witnesses Frasier and Ross. He said Ross and Frasier pointed to strangulation as Dante’s cause of death.
“There would not be a scenario where the child would have these injuries and would still be walking around,” Frasier told the jury. “The brain injury happened after he was seen at Rutters. No questions.”
Additionally, Fowler, the medical expert Holt brought to the stand, shifted his own findings after hearing testimony from the trial, saying it was possible Dante could have choked on an animal cracker.
Holt reviewed Leah’s testimony and said she seemed to recollect the events of Sept. 6 perfectly for prosecutors, but on cross-examination, her testimony was filled with “I don’t know,” and “I don’t remember.”
In the months before Dante died, Leah left Adams County, where she and Dante had been staying, to go to York County, Holt said. She left without informing any case workers involved with Dante, and without telling the therapist who was helping her with anger management problems, according to Holt.
“He’s on my last nerve. I’m about to snap,” Leah once wrote to Bowie in a Facebook instant message.
“She did snap!” Holt said, describing that Leah was living with no phone, no money and a sister trying to take Dante away from her with an emergency custody hearing in Adams County. She also had been reported by people at the domestic abuse shelter where she was staying for not getting Dante medical care for a herpes infection and more. “This didn’t happen overnight,” Holt said.
Leah never cared for Dante unless she could leverage him as a pawn to reel in people to give her help, according to Holt. Dante was riddled with bruises — yet Holt said Leah did not want to take the boy to the hospital for fear if they discovered the injuries, she would get in trouble.
So, she either refused to take him to the hospital, or covered up his injuries with makeup, Holt said. And the fact prosecutors never called anyone from Children and Youth Services to testify is telling of their case, he said.
Barker agreed that Leah Mullinix was an awful mother. In fact, he said she probably confessed to endangering the welfare of her child on the witness stand 300 times over four days of testimony. But he said all the evidence, in his view, points toward Bowie as the killer.
Barker focused his closing message solely on the events of Sept. 6, about which he said Bowie routinely lied. According to Barker, Bowie’s story about what happened the day Dante was hospitalized changed between his first police interview on Sept. 7, when the boy was still alive, and the second interview Sept. 19, five days after Dante died.
Bowie first said he visited his mothers’ house with Dante the night of Sept. 6, before backtracking that statement, Barker said. Barker then pointed out Bowie never mentioned the makeup or accusations of abuse, nor did he mention during his first interview with police that Dante’s eyes were rolling back into his head.
And then, his story about whether he had the car seat changed, Barker said.
The bruises that covered Dante’s body the night he arrived at the hospital unresponsive were caused over a long period of time, Holt said. However, the more severe, newer bruising was caused by Leah while Bowie was in the bathroom earlier that night, according to Holt.
Bowie went to the bathroom for 15 minutes to talk to another woman on Sept. 6, and while he was inside, he heard a thump and yelp. When he left the bathroom, he saw Dante standing in front of Leah with his head up, and saw Leah put an object away, Holt said.
That object was a bottle of makeup, according to Holt.
When Leah asked Bowie to take her to the hospital later on Sept. 6,and watch Dante for her, she did not actually have a migraine, according to Holt. He said a migraine would have put her in immense pain and she would not have been able to drive, sit directly under a light or use her phone, Holt said.
Instead, Leah was using the excuse of a migraine to get away from Dante, whom she did something to and needed to get away from.
“If she didn’t do anything to the kid … why would you have an exchange between her and Holiday saying: ‘They can’t charge you with murder. You weren’t there and I wasn’t there.’” Holt said, referring to Hector Rivera, a former acquaintance Leah stayed with who goes by the name Holiday.
Holt said the linear bruise on Dante’s jaw was caused by the boy falling out of the car when Bowie and Dante returned to the apartment where he was staying later in the night. However, Barker argued the bruising could have been caused by Dante being choked out by Bowie.
There was no evidence Leah Mullinix ever put makeup on Dante, according to Barker. In fact, he said no swabs from anywhere inside Bowie’s car matched the composition of any kind of makeup. However, Holt maintained that apparent smears on Dante’s face in some photos taken Sept. 2, while the two were at a hospital visit for Dante’s herpes infection, were consistent with smudged makeup, which was being used to hide bruising.
“You murdered me,” Barker began imitating what Dante would say if he were alive and able to talk. “You committed murder of the first degree. You have beaten me, you strangled me, you suffocated me, you slammed me to the ground, you gave me brain injury, you made my hypoxic and you made me dead and you intended to do so.”
But Holt said Dante would identify his real killer, Leah, were he able to speak.
“If [Dante] could say words, he would say, “Mommy hurts me, Mommy beats me,” Holt said.
After hearing jury charge instructions, the York County Jury will begin its deliberations Friday morning.
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
——————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
------------------------------
