Bradford v. State

759 So. 2d 434, 2000 WL 55278
CourtCourt of Appeals of Mississippi
DecidedJanuary 25, 2000
Docket1998-KA-01699-COA
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 759 So. 2d 434 (Bradford v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Mississippi primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bradford v. State, 759 So. 2d 434, 2000 WL 55278 (Mich. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinion

759 So.2d 434 (2000)

Curtis BRADFORD, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Mississippi, Appellee.

No. 1998-KA-01699-COA.

Court of Appeals of Mississippi.

January 25, 2000.

*435 James H. Arnold Jr., Durant, Harvey Christopher Freelon, Jackson, Attorneys for Appellant.

Office of the Attorney General by Pat S. Flynn, Attorney for Appellee.

BEFORE SOUTHWICK, P.J., LEE, AND PAYNE, JJ.

SOUTHWICK, P.J., for the Court:

¶ 1. Curtis Bradford was convicted of the felony child abuse of his girlfriend's two-year-old son. On appeal, he argues that the trial court should not have admitted evidence of the child's prior injuries, that a mistrial should have been granted following a deputy's testimony that a hole in the wall of the apartment where the child lived appeared to be the size of a baby's head, and that trial counsel was *436 ineffective. There is no merit to these arguments and we affirm.

FACTS

¶ 2. Curtis Bradford lived with his mother in an apartment downstairs from that of Cynthia Clay. In the last two months of 1997, Bradford began seeing Ms. Clay, spending more and more time in her apartment with her and her four children, Demetrius, age two; Michelle, age six; Caneshia, age seven; and Jonathan, age nine. Eventually, he moved into the Clay apartment.

¶ 3. On January 9, 1998, Ms. Clay noticed some bruises on Demetrius's body and thought that he did not feel well. She asked her aunt, who sometimes kept the child, to take him to the doctor. The aunt took him to Dr. Albert Bartee in Lexington, who found that the child had a fracture of the left arm and a partially-healed fractured left clavicle. He also had scratch marks on his face and scratches or burn marks on his left scrotum. Demetrius was admitted to Methodist Hospital in Lexington, where he remained until January 16. During the child's hospital stay, his injuries were investigated by Katherine Foster of the Holmes County Department of Human Services as possible child abuse.

¶ 4. After the investigation concluded that Demetrius had been physically abused, the youth court ordered him removed from his mother's care. He was sent home with his maternal grandmother, Hattie Clay. Without the court's knowledge, Mrs. Clay returned Demetrius to Cynthia Clay on January 19, 1998.

¶ 5. On January 21, Ms. Clay left Demetrius alone with Bradford for thirty to forty-five minutes while she went to the Department of Human Services to get a signature on an excuse allowing her to go back to work. When she returned, Demetrius was in bed, and there was a hole in the wall of the apartment's hallway. Later, when Ms. Clay checked on her son, she saw that his position in the bed was odd, that he had scratches on his head and that he was acting listless. After taking him to the bathroom and undressing him, she found numerous bruises on his body. When asked what happened, Bradford told Ms. Clay that Demetrius had fallen. That evening, the child would not eat and began throwing up, with his eyes rolling back in his head. Ms. Clay asked a neighbor to take her and Demetrius to the hospital, over Bradford's objections. After doctors in Greenwood examined Demetrius, they transferred him by ambulance to University Hospital in Jackson. There, Dr. Andrew Parent found that Demetrius had sustained a skull fracture with sub-dural hematoma, three rib fractures, a liver laceration, right renal and adrenal hematomas, retinal hemorrhages in both eyes and numerous bruises, in addition to the spiral fracture of his left arm and the left clavicle fracture discovered January 9.

¶ 6. When Ms. Foster was notified that Demetrius had been beaten, she called her supervisor, Sammie Stuart, who went to University Hospital to check on the child, who was then in intensive care. Before filing her report, Ms. Stuart interviewed Demetrius's siblings, who stated that Curtis had repeatedly hit Demetrius on other occasions. Holmes County Deputy Roosevelt March also investigated the incident, photographing Demetrius in the hospital and visiting Ms. Clay's apartment, where he took pictures of the hole in the wall. Following this investigation, Bradford was indicted for felony child abuse in the January 21 incident. After a jury trial in Holmes County Circuit Court, Bradford was found guilty of felony child abuse.

DISCUSSION

I. Admissibility of Evidence of the January 9 Incident

¶ 7. On appeal, Bradford argues that evidence of the January 9 incident, for which he was not indicted, should not have been admitted. He argues that it prejudiced the jury by tending to show that he *437 was guilty of abusing Demetrius on other occasions.

¶ 8. Evidence of other bad acts may be admissible as "proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident" under certain conditions. M.R.E. 404(b). A case relied upon by Bradford permitted evidence of a prior shooting to be admitted as bearing on the question of whether or not the shooting in which the victim was killed was accidental. Readus v. State, 272 So.2d 659, 661 (Miss.1973):

It is not to be inferred from the rule stated above that the admission of evidence which shows or tends to show the commission of an offense other than the particular one with which the accused is charged must be excluded in all cases and under all circumstances. There are, on the contrary, several well recognized exceptions to and limitations upon the general rule stated. Evidence of other crimes is always admissible when such evidence tends directly to establish the particular crime, and it is usually competent to prove the motive, the intent, the absence of mistake or accident, a common scheme or plan embracing the commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to establish the others, or the identity of the persons charged with the commission of the crime on trial.

Id., quoting Hawkins v. State, 224 Miss. 309, 80 So.2d 1 (1955).

¶ 9. Initially, the trial court in the present case sustained the defense's objection to evidence of the January 9 injuries and admonished the jury to disregard such testimony. Later, however, the court decided to admit the testimony and gave the jury a limiting instruction at the close of all testimony. That instruction cautioned the jury that they could not consider the January 9 evidence as "touching upon the guilt or the innocence of the Defendant concerning the charge for which he is presently on trial for injuries to the child Demetrius Clay on or about January 21, 1998. You may give this evidence such weight and credit as you deem proper, relating to motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident."

¶ 10. Bradford complains that a prejudicially long period of time elapsed between the mention of the January 9 incident in the State's opening remarks and the court's admonishment of the jury to disregard the reference. That is inconsequential since ultimately the jury could consider it for the limited purposes covered by instructions given by the court.

¶ 11. The testimony concerning the January 9 incident was properly admitted as "proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity or absence of mistake or accident." M.R.E. 404(b). The supreme court has permitted testimony of prior child abuse to show a continuous and purposeful course of criminal abuse and to negate testimony that the injuries to the child in the charged incident were the result of a fall. Shelton v. State, 445 So.2d 844, 848 (Miss.1984).

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Bluebook (online)
759 So. 2d 434, 2000 WL 55278, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bradford-v-state-missctapp-2000.