PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This trial looks to be of significant interest to the readers of this Blog. (I have no inside knowledge of the case - just a hunch that there will be much grist for our mill.) So I will be dropping in on the case from time to time.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: “When (Carter) slammed that autopsy photo on the table in front of me ... I think everyone saw my reaction,” she said, referring to the video interview that was played in the courtroom earlier in the trial. “I still to this day wish I’d never seen that. He told me she had a skull fracture.” In testimony last week, Martin and Carter corrected that from the witness stand. Carter testified that he was working “45-50 cases,” and had confused evidence from another investigation he was working and this one. “It seemed like (Carter) wanted me to tell him that Brandon did it,” Stringer said of the interrogation on the day she got charged."
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STORY: "Stringer takes the stand, accuses doc of lying to her," by Reporter Mark Thornton published by The Laurel Leader-Call, on June 14, 2023.
GIST: Brooke Stringer stood by her story — and she stood by her man — when she took the witness stand in her own defense on Tuesday afternoon. “He is a great father,” Stringer, 24, said of co-defendant and boyfriend Brandon Gardner, 28, under questioning by his attorney Chris Collins. “He works hard for our son and for me. They have a garden planted, and they go out there picking and watering together.
The defense team’s medical experts will try to sow some seeds of doubt about the state’s case when they testify on Wednesday, the second week of the capital murder trial of Gardner and Stringer, who are charged in the death of her 6-month-old baby Rosalee.
But that won’t happen until Assistant District Attorney Kristen Martin completes her cross-examination of Stringer, who was on the stand being questioned by her attorney Tangi Carter and Collins for more than two hours Tuesday afternoon. Martin was in the middle of cross-examining Stringer when the trial broke for the day.
After the prosecution rested Monday afternoon, Stringer’s defense began, and she made the decision to take the witness stand following testimony from her younger sister Amber, 22, and lifelong family friends Brittany Lewis and Rebecca Lyons.
But the decision to testify wasn’t nearly as difficult as the one she had to make at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson on the night of Oct. 28, 2019. That’s when she decided to take Rosalee off life support. “That was the hardest choice I ever had to make,” she said, crying after recalling the conversation she had with her father after doctors told them that the baby was brain dead and had no signs of life. “Me and my dad went in the room, and he said, ‘It’s time, Brooke. It’s time to let her go. She’s going to Heaven.’”
Much of the testimony of the day was about the emotions they were all going through — first with the death of Rosalee, then with the criminal charges on Dec. 17, 2021, then as a result of the aftermath of the accusations.
Stringer's story of what happened on the night Rosalee was rushed to South Central Regional Medical Center from Gardner’s house in Gitano with what was a fatal head injury didn’t change — she put Rosalee to bed on a pallet with a bottle and was in the shower when Gardner came running in the bathroom saying there was something wrong with the baby.
But there was one stunning allegation that hadn’t been mentioned in other interviews Stringer had done with Child Protective Services investigators, then-Capt. Tonya Madison of the Jones County Sheriff’s Department and with Investigators J.D. Carter of the JCSD and Brad Grunig of the Jones County District Attorney’s Office on the day she was arrested.
Stringer claimed that while she was at UMMC, forensic pediatrician Dr. Scott Benton “pulled me to the side and was saying Brandon admitted to it and was going to turn himself in to the Jones County Sheriff’s Department,” she said. “And I believed him.”
Audio tapes of Benton’s separate interviews with Gardner and Stringer were played for the jury earlier in the trial, but she said there was a second interview that was not taped and they were joined by her uncle — longtime Laurel police officer John Stringer.
“Dr. Benton was very nice to me,” Brooke Stringer said. Carter asked, “He didn’t treat you like a child-abuser?” She said, “He did not.”
Carter asked her client if she had an attorney with her when she interviewed with Benton, Madison, Carter and Grunig. “No,” Stringer said. “I did not do this. Never in my life did I think I’d get charged with this.”
She described how stunning that was when she thought she and Gardner were going to the JCSD to discuss Benton’s findings and “close the case” on Dec. 17, 2021, but they both wound up in handcuffs, charged with capital murder.
“When (Carter) slammed that autopsy photo on the table in front of me ... I think everyone saw my reaction,” she said, referring to the video interview that was played in the courtroom earlier in the trial. “I still to this day wish I’d never seen that. He told me she had a skull fracture.”
In testimony last week, Martin and Carter corrected that from the witness stand.
Carter testified that he was working “45-50 cases,” and had confused evidence from another investigation he was working and this one.
“It seemed like (Carter) wanted me to tell him that Brandon did it,” Stringer said of the interrogation on the day she got charged. Both were charged and booked into the Jones County Adult Detention Center on $500,000 bond. Stringer recalled having to spend Christmas in jail. Gardner bonded out right after Christmas and Stringer bonded out about two weeks after him.
Life changed after that, she testified, and she blamed the Leader-Call for that — a recurring theme from the witnesses of the day. “I did not want to go in public,” she said, adding that she got her father and sister to come to the jail and get her phone so they could delete her Facebook account because of “death threats” and other comments directed at her. “I can’t find a decent job. I applied to multiple places, but someone would know ...”
She went from working at a diagnostic lab at SCRMC to working at a car wash in Collins, said Stringer, who has three attorneys on her defense team. Stringer testified that she was not receiving any money or any kind of benefit from an A&E documentary crew that’s following her case for an episode of “Accused: Guilty or Innocent?”
The crew reached out to Carter in May, Stringer said, and she and her family agreed to do it so their side of the story could be told.
Stringer also testified that the Leader-Call has not asked for her side of the story. But she and Gardner were asked for comment on the day of their initial appearances in Jones County Justice Court. That’s the same day that Carter and Martin offered explanations for the serious charges, and all reporting since then has been based on court proceedings and documents.
Lewis and Lyons described themselves as mother figures to the Stringer sisters, both of whom were raised by their father because their mother has a drug problem and is “out of the picture.”
They both described Brooke Stringer as a “great mother” and described Rosalee as a “sweet, happy” baby. Both cried as they testified about spending those final hours with mother and child at UMMC.
Lewis said she asked a professional photographer friend who captures “life events” to come to the hospital to take some high-quality, keepsake photos of Rosalee, noting that she was “very respectful of the situation.”
She and Lyons testified Rosalee was wearing only a diaper and a whole lot of monitors, not a Halloween costume, as stated in previous testimony.
Amber Stringer, Lewis and Lyons were also asked about what Stringer did with the money that was raised in a GoFundMe account and about Facebook posts showing her having fun with friends, including a “Sunday Funday,” shortly after the funeral. The latter was “a trip to a cathedral in New Orleans to light candles in memory of Rosalee,” Amber Stringer testified.
On cross-examination, Martin asked, “Is Brooke Catholic?” The defendant’s sister said she wasn’t, and Martin asked, “You know there are two or three cathedrals in the Laurel area, right?”
All of the witnesses put a lot of emphasis on the injury Rosalee suffered at her daycare on Oct. 2 that caused a bruise on the side of her face.
A photo of that was displayed on the big screen in the courtroom, as were several of Gardner holding her at the petting zoo of the South Mississippi Fair just hours before she was rushed to SCRMC.
“He did everything a biological father would,” Brooke Stringer said of Gardner, including changing her diapers, dressing her and giving her a bottle. She testified that he had never gotten angry or even frustrated with the baby, whose father was a foreign exchange student from Germany.
She testified that he saw a bruise on Rosalee’s forehead the day before she was rushed to the ER. “I said I didn’t know (how it happened), but I would ask at daycare Monday,” Stringer said, but Rosalee died that morning.
Martin and ADA Katie Sumrall asked witnesses why Stringer would continue sending her baby to a daycare if she believed abuse was happening.
They all testified that she had no other options, as a working mother who was financially responsible for her baby, and she was on “numerous” waiting lists for other daycares.
Stringer, Gardner and their young son all go to Faith Community Church now, along with Gardner’s grandmother, she said.
That’s the same church parking lot where they met an EMServ Ambulance and handed off Rosalee to medical personnel as they were rushing her to SCRMC.
Stringer was Miss West Jones when she graduated in 2017, and she was a cheerleader, Beta Club member “and in every activity,” she said. She had never been in trouble with the law before this case, she said.
Martin’s cross-examination of Stringer will continue first thing Wednesday morning followed by medical experts for the defense — Minnesota pediatrician Dr. Peter J. Dehnel and Missouri pathologist Dr. Stephen Godfrey.
Tuesday’s proceedings started with Judge Dal Williamson denying the defense’s motion for a directed verdict. He gave a detailed explanation to support that ruling, noting that “sufficient, substantial evidence” has been presented to continue with the trial.
After he concluded, Stringer’s attorney Jansen Owen told the court he was concerned because there was “no white noise” going through speakers into the jury room — as many courtrooms are equipped with — to ensure that the jury didn’t hear the judge’s reasons for denying the motion.
“Why not bring it up before you read it?” Martin asked the judge. Williamson agreed, saying, “That’s an ambush. I’m satisfied they could not hear.""
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.leader-call.com/news/free_news/stringer-takes-the-stand-accuses-doc-of-lying-to-her/article_50fc709a-0ab7-11ee-a31c-4f5fd807952c.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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;
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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;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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