I bet my “beliefs” are more substantiated by actual facts than yours — not to mention reason. For example, unless you consider losing your temper and shaking a baby to be a freak accident, I bet domestic violence committed by a “boyfriend” against a child that is not his is at least a thousand times more likely to occur than your freak accident scenario. I would be shocked if any of you could refute this with anything more substantial than emotionally charged gibberish.

Freak accidents happen and when they do law enforcement gets suspicious and can easily put innocent persons on trial.

You are far too certain that some things do not and cannot happen and have far too little reason for your beliefs.

I’ll stipulate that your “hands-on” experience qualifies you as an expert. So how many babies have you killed in your decades of “hands-on” experience? How many babies have “the rest” of your contemporaries killed with their “hands-on” experience? Not including Havard, do you personally know of a single case where someone “accidentally” killed a baby due to it being too much to handle while wet?

You can keep your dollar and your donut. The fact of the matter is, you weren’t there and neither was I, so we’re both full of shit.

You go ahead and keep your superior knowledge based on, “I haven’t heard of it” and “google doesn’t…” while the rest of us who actually live with and care for children every day, and who have decades of hands-on experience in child care will simply rot in our gaping abyss of ignorance.

Funny, Bronwyn I was just thinking the same thing about you guys. I don’t know where you all are from (Possibly Mississippi?) but around here people don’t “accidentally” kill babies while giving them a bath. I can not recall even a single case. Google can not recall a single case nationwide except for one where it was used as a defense against allegations of shaking the baby to death.

Young men don’t typically babysit infants that are not theirs — especially if they don’t even know how to give one a bath without killing it. This is not a mental contortion, it is just a fact.

Yeah, Dr. Hayne is bad, Ward is bad, Mississippi justice is bad, police power is out of control, and the war on drugs is a travesty, but I got a dollar to a donut that this guy Havard shook that baby. If you don’t like my opinion, go fuck yourself. And I mean that in the most civil way.

Face it, this is not the best poster case for your cause. Furthermore, I bet if the baby “accidentally” killed by Havard was your grandchild, you would not take such a stoopid position.

I hope to see ALL Hyanes cases go back to trial. Even if he did not testify but had a part in the investigation process. Who was the investigator in this case if I might ask… SOME EVIL ONE’S IN MS….

When someone is babysitting, they are expected to take care of all the child’s needs, that includes bathing. Maybe he was clumsy, maybe he was inexperienced with infants, but his story is not really as far fetched as you’re trying to imply. The situation as presented is quite plausible.

Of course, the truth and what can be proven in court are two different things.

Tomwright’s comment about equal protection is right on the mark. A policy such as he proposes would prevent prosecutorial abuse with “expert witnesses”. If someone has limited means, the state should provide matching funds for the defense to refute the State’s position.

Who’s the one with the contorted mind?!?

Also, I don’t suspect you’ve had all that much experience with infants. They are strong and very wriggly. When a 10-month old decides he wants out of your lap, he will arch his back and writhe his way out and the best you can hope for is to ease him down so he doesn’t launch himself onto the floor.

I’m trying to be civil here, but good god damn sir, you are an idiot.

In my experience infants are not very difficult to handle, wet or not. You can contort your mind however you feel necessary to explain how a tiny baby can overpower a man’s grip but I don’t have to do that because common sense tells me that a man does not bathe a infant female baby for his “girlfriend at the time.” That is, if I may, an enormous incongruity. Now had the boyfriend been hosing the kid off with a water hose when something horrible happened, maybe I could see it.

I’d say both of them may be of negligence, but not homicide, and I imagine Mr. Havard simply didn’t get a good enough grip on the child - pure accident and the stuff of new mothers’ nightmares.

Think of people whose kids fall out of bumbo chairs and crack their skulls - those people, instead of suing the chair company, should be charged with negligence or reckless endangerment for putting the child in the chair on a countertop or table. That’s a tragedy just waiting to happen and the manufacturer even lays out the risks to those who need to be slapped in the face with the obvious. Same thing with the child car seat on the bed. A man who knows he is violent in his sleep has no business sleeping with an infant - and certainly not while the infant is in a carseat. Carseats weren’t made to serve as cosleepers.

Just as it sickens me when parental stupidity is ignored in favor of flashy lawsuits (mis-assembled cribs, anyone?), it equally sickens me when prosecutors seek murder charges to make themselves look good when the appropriate charge is clearly negligent homicide at worst, reckless endangerment at best. (standard IANAL disclaimer here).

Even disregarding Dr Hayne’s bogus testimony I am pretty sure Jeffery Havard was up to no good from one single fact: “Havard claims he was bathing the child when she slipped from his hands and hit her head on the toilet.”

Not even his kid… Doesn’t happen. Slam dunk case. And I would convict the mother of something as well. If Havard shook the baby, then slammed it’s head on the toilet to cover up her death — which in my opinion is way more likely then the baby simply slipping from his hands — he absolutely deserves to fry.

Maybe the backwards assed folks of Mississippi don’t mind a little baby killing as long as there is no buggery going on and the judiciary is compensating by using Dr Haynes.

Equal protection under the law, right?