MASON CITY – A man convicted of strangling his infant son will get no new trial, the Iowa Court of Appeals has ruled.
Kenneth Adams was sent to prison for 50 years for causing the death of his 19-month-old son in 2012. He appealed his judgment and sentence for child endangerment resulting in death. He contended that the jury’s finding of guilt is not supported by sufficient evidence; the district court applied an incorrect standard in ruling on his motion for new trial; and his trial attorney was ineffective in failing to challenge the medical examiner’s testimony as an improper credibility assessment. The Iowa Court of Appeals found sufficient evidence to support the knowledge element of the child endangerment charge, but agreed with Adams that the trial court used a sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard rather than the weight-of-the-evidence standard.
The appeals court conditionally affirmed Adams’ judgment and sentence; vacated the ruling on the new trial motion, and remanded for reconsideration of the new trial motion applying a weight-of-the-evidence standard to the existing record; and preserved Adams’ ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims for post-conviction proceedings.
According to court documents, Adams’ son was nineteen months old at the time of his death on or about October 27, 2012. According to his mother, he had recently been treated for an ear infection, was experiencing some congestion, and was a little fussy on the night before his death but was otherwise a big, healthy, and generally happy child.
On the day of the child’s death, his mother removed him from his crib shortly before 10:00 A.M, proceeded with the family’s usual weekend breakfast routine, and left to run errands with her daughter. Adams stayed home with the child and his older brother.
In a recorded interview, Adams told law enforcement officers the child got upset when his mother left, threw a tantrum, and “bashed [him] in the face.” Adams was angered by the child’s action. He told the child not to do that and instructed him to lie down. Adams threw a pillow on the couch, grabbed the child’s pants and “flipped him up” onto the couch, placing him face down on the pillow. He held the child’s arm and stroked his back until the child’s breathing slowed down. At that point, Adams “turned [the child’s] face slightly so that his face was sitting out” because he was concerned about sudden infant death syndrome. He played video games with his older son, cleaned the upstairs bathroom, and returned to play video games, before noticing something was wrong with the child.
Adams called 911 on a recorded line. He informed the dispatcher his son was not breathing and his eyes were glassy.
Law enforcement officers and paramedics arrived at the scene and attempted life-saving procedures, to no avail. According to one officer, the child “was limp, and his face was blue.”
Adams provided the officers with differing accounts of whether the child convulsed before dying. As for Adams’s assertion that he cleaned the bathroom, an officer found the bathroom in disarray.
The State medical examiner testified the cause of the child’s death was suffocation. He noticed bruises on the child, most prominently behind the right ear. In his view, the bruise could have been caused by a finger being pressed on the scalp. He also observed “11 different discrete areas of hemorrhage or bleeding into [] fatty tissue just underneath the scalp,” as well as contusions on the child’s legs. He testified the bruises would have been caused by “blunt force type trauma.” He further explained the child’s brain had “hypoxic neuronal changes,” which were consistent with death by suffocation. He ruled the manner of death a homicide based on Adams’s admission to holding the child’s arm. The medical examiner eliminated other reasonable causes of death, including choking on vomit, trauma from the child’s “head butt” of his father, ear infection or cold, and sudden infant death syndrome.
CONVICTED AND GOING TO PRISON
