Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - MOM SUNBATHES IN PUERTO RICO LEAVES BABY ALONE IN OHIO TO DIE IN CRIB

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Kristel Candelario is off on a 10-day whirlwind of adventure and romance. Ring door video from a neighbor shows Candelario hauling her suitcase to a car as she heads out of town, and she is posting pictures from the beginning of her trip about her 'best life' adventure. Back at home in Cleveland, Ohio, in the late night, early morning hours, the same Ring Doorbell camera that catches Candelario loading her suitcase into a car before she leaves her home, now is picking up the faint sounds of a crying baby. When Kristel Candelario leaves on her 10-day vacation, she places her 16-month-old baby, Jailyn, into a pack-n-play pen with a couple of bottles of milk and some crackers, nothing else. Jailyn is left alone, in a playpen, for 10 days straight. She dies from starvation and dehydration; she is hungry and thirsty. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Derek Smith – Defense Attorney for Kristel Candelario  Dr. Heidi Green – Clinical Psychologist, Trauma Specialist,  and Author: ‘The Path to Self-Love and World Domination; IG: @drheidigreen  Barry Golden– Former Senior Inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service, Owner of Golden Consulting and Investigations Dr. Eric Eason – Board-certified Forensic Pathologist, Consultant; Instagram: @eric_a_eason, Facebook: Eric August Eason, LinkedIn: Eric Eason, MD Sia Nyorker  - Weekend Anchor & Multimedia Reporter at WOIO-TV in Cleveland  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Did a 32-year-old mother lounge and frolic on a Puerto Rican beach while her little baby died in a playpen. As a matter of fact, I don't like listening to it, but as I've told so many juries, I can't even count them anymore. You can't turn away from the evidence. You're on this jury. You're in the box and you have to look at it and you have to listen to it, whether you hate it or not. I have listened over and over to a neighbor's ring doorbell cam. I can't see anything, but I can hear, I can hear reportedly baby Jalen screaming. Now this is on about day three of no food, no water, no mommy, no daddy, no nothing. Now I'm going to find out from a veteran investigative reporter,

is it true that this little baby girl, just 16 months old, her own poop smeared on her lips, in her mouth dried as a little thing was trying to find something to eat. Is this real? And joining us today is the man who defends mommy, a high profile lawyer joining us, Derek Smith. Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Crime Stories and on Sirius XM 111. Brace yourself and you've got to listen really carefully to hear what I believe is baby Jaylene screaming for mommy. Did mommy actually go, this Ohio mom, to lounge and frolic? And I say frolic because I've seen photos of her that looks as if she's dancing on a beach in Puerto Rico.

There she is, beautiful young woman. But boy, can looks be deceiving. Is that Crystal Candelario on a Puerto Rican beach? If so, where's baby? Where's baby Jaylene? Where is her other seven-year-old daughter? Joining me in all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now, but this is what I understand. To Sia New Yorker joining us, anchor and multimedia reporter at WOIO. Sia, thank you for being with us.

Let me understand something. I'm about to play a 911 call. Now, is this 911 call? I want you to listen to it, Sia, and tell me, is this what happens when mommy finally drags home? Listen. What did she think was going to happen leaving her baby alone for 10 days? Okay, Sia New Yorker joining us, WIOIOTV. Sia, again, thank you for being with us. When was the 911 call made?

It was made the day she came back on June 16th. And again, prosecutors told us that that 911 call came after she returned and after she had redressed the baby. So the baby Jalyn had already... Stop, stop, stop, stop. Uh-oh. See a New Yorker. Did you just say after she redressed the baby? After she redressed the baby. And that was new information that came out in court. And I felt I watched people in court, their mouths just, they were covering their mouths. I mean, we were just shocked. That was shocking information.

Okay, before I play the rest of the 911 call, see a New Yorker joining us. W.O.I.O.T.V. Derek Smith, did you know the allegation that your client came home? Now, wait, sees the baby. Then redresses the baby in nice, fresh clothes, I guess, and then screams into the baby in nice fresh clothes, I guess, and then screams into the phone. You did. Or did you learn that? That did not happen. That did not happen.

Okay. All right. Guys, Derek Smith wins a lot of cases. Okay. Did you just see him? Look, look, look right at me and go, that didn't happen. That did not happen. You know what? If I'm ever charged with a felony, I'm calling Derek Smith. He looked right at the camera and said, that did not happen. Okay. Let's listen to more of that

911 call. Brace yourself, Derek Smith. Why? Why? Why? Because you left her alone for 10 days. That's why. Why? Why? Derek, again, why is your client screaming into 911? Why? Why? Why? When she left the baby alone for 10 days, what did she think was going to happen? I asked myself that question still today. We still don't have a clear answer. She couldn't articulate why she did it, what she was thinking when she just up and left her with a couple bottles of formula and some baby cookies and crackers in her pack and play when she up and left. Um, there's more to that, that 911 call too, that wasn't necessarily played at the sentencing. Um, she did perform CPR on Jaylene. Um, after, after that, when Jaylene, you know, according to my client squeezed her finger and she was saying that she still was not gone. I it's, it's Okay, hold on right there.

Let's not put perfume on the pig, okay? When you say gone, I know what that means, because for the longest time, and even now, it's hard for me to say these words. Keith is dead. That was my fiancé, Keith. I would say was my fiance, Keith. I would say gone. He's gone.

So let's just force ourselves to say the truth. Derek Smith is a high-profile lawyer who represents Crystal Candelario. When you say your client came in and squeezed her baby's finger and that she wasn't gone, you mean your client says she wasn't dead. Is that right? That's correct. Okay. To Dr. Eric Eason. And it was Jaylene that squeezed Crystal's finger.

Dr. Eric Eason joining us, board certified forensic pathologist and consultant on Facebook, Eric August Eason. Dr. Eason, thank you for being with us how long can a human live without anything to drink uh probably no more than a couple of days is what we usually say um i've had i'm aware of cases that i had georgia where an infant was left um for a couple of days and the belief was that she could have survived no more than like three or four days at best certainly not 10 days no if the baby had a bottle of formula or let's just say two bottles of formula in the pack and play and the baby had that how long could the baby live a couple more days of course um but it's tough to say. You know, each individual is different, so it's very tough to say exactly how long this baby would have lived.

So many factors to consider, but it would have prolonged the survival time for sure. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The so-called killer Ohio mom, Crystal Candelario, lounges on a Puerto Rican beach after leaving her baby daughter just a few months old for 10 days. And oh, dear Lord in heaven. You know how many people across this country would pay lots of money to have a beautiful baby like that? Okay, what more do we know? Listen to Dave Mack, Crime Online. Crystal Candelaria is off on a 10 day whirlwind

of adventure and romance. Ring doorbell video from a neighbor shows Candelaria hauling her suitcase to a car as she heads out of town. And she's posting pictures from the beginning of her trip about her best life adventure. Back at home in Cleveland, Ohio, in the late night, early morning hours, that same ring doorbell camera that catches Candelaria loading her suitcase into a car before leaving, now is picking up the faint sounds of a crying baby.

Oh, I've played it for you already. I'm not going to play it again. Joining me right now, Dr. Heidi Green, clinical psychologist and trauma specialist, author of The Path to Self-Love and World Domination. I don't know if I want to go that far. You can find her at drheidigreen.com. Dr. Heidi, thank you for being with us. What does that mean? A whirlwind trip of adventure and romance. Earlier this morning, I could hardly think straight because I know my daughter has a math, a chemistry, and what is the other one? AP literature test. And she worked her fingers to the bone for days. She's been studying till 11, 30, and 12 at night.

And my son has the same rigorous testing schedule. That was earlier this morning. I could hardly think straight because I was worried, not whether they'll pass, but I was worried about them. And there was nothing I could do to help them get through a seemingly very, very difficult trial. How do you leave for 10 days of adventure and romance and get on a plane and fly to Puerto Rico and leave the baby in a pack and play with a bottle? How does that happen? Adventure and romance, my rear end. It's unfathomable, truly. And when we're looking at it from a mental

health perspective, there can be questions such as, were there cognitive issues? Did she not understand that her child would die? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Dr. Heidi, I'm certainly not a shrink. You are the high profile clinical psychologist, not me. But if you know how to wind your way through a major metropolitan airport and get through TSA and pull out your driver's license and put your face up and do this and that and find the gate and get on when they call you and drink your drink and then frolic. And I know Derek Smith hates that word. His client was frolicking on the beach, doing jigs and dances. There are other photos of her arms up in the air, like she's doing, you know, a yoga stretch. Stop it, mommy. She's just not mentally ill. If you can wind your way through an airport like the one in Ohio, you've been to that airport? Uh-uh.

No, she is not suffering any mental deficiency. So she's not, it doesn't appear that she is suffering from any kind of cognitive deficiency. So one could surmise that she had at least average intelligence and she would at the very least understand that leaving a baby for 10 days is very likely to result in that child's death. Now, does she have a mental illness is a different question, but even people who have depression, anxiety, even more serious mental health disorders still can have an understanding of what would happen to a baby being left for that long. So for me, it's difficult to imagine how there's going to be a defense that says that her mental illness had something to do with this, because having a mental health condition doesn't render you incapable of understanding what would happen to a child after 10 days alone. You just heard a high profile clinical psychologist, Dr. Heidi Green state that, Hey, does she not understand a baby dies after you leave it alone for 10 days? Hello?

Why do you think she threw a bottle of formula in there and some crackers? Because she knew the baby would eat. She's got one seven year old child, and this is a 16 month old baby. Of course she knows the baby's going to get hungry. She knows what happens when a baby doesn't eat or drink. See a New Yorker joining me, uh, anchor multimedia reporter, W O I O TV there in Ohio. See a thank you for being with us. This mom knows exactly what she's doing. Look at all these selfies. Um, okay. She's not leaving much to the imagination, but I'm not the church lady,

so I don't care, but look at her taking selfies. Okay. There you go with a full on Kardashian pout with the mouth. And there's another one. Oh yeah. There it is. Yeah. See those nails, see that lipstick, see that hair, the makeup. This woman is in no way mentally or emotionally deficient. Uh-uh. Sia, what can you tell me about this woman? What I can tell you is that, you know, during all of this, they came out, they showed these photos, you know, like you mentioned, we saw tickets, we saw receipts. She was able to get on a plane. She was able to travel. You know, she came back. She was caught on many, you know, surveillance videos. And so people there in the courtroom felt a sense they weren't buying it. No one was buying that.

And, you know, this is not to say that she doesn't suffer from some kind of mental illness. But as far as leaving her 16-month-old child alone in that playpen for that long of a period, no one was buying that. Okay. I'm with you on that derrick smith before i go to barry golden from u.s marshal service derrick smith does your client have some sort of a mental deficiency like that i don't know about was she having a psychotic break when she was dancing on the puerto rican beach while her baby starved and ate fe Oh, that's what we were searching for. The state did their exam, evaluated her for the sanity at the time of the act and for just overall her sanity. And then

our own expert evaluated her. They did have a provisional diagnosis of borderline personality disorder along with anxiety and depression. Hold on. I got to write that down. Borderline what? Borderline personality disorder. Can you name one person, one person you graduated with from law school that you're not convinced has some sort of a personality disorder and depression? Yeah, that sets in about week three first year. When you find out that's what you got to do the next three years and then have to represent clients you know did it. I mean, that would throw me over the edge. Personality disorder. What personality disorder? Let me cross examine you just a minute. What personality disorder did this woman have? Just a disorder? Well, she was hospitalized in February for what she thought was complex migraines because her whole body was her left side of her body was just numb and she was in bed for days her parents took her she seemed to have gotten over that on the beach okay so nothing was numb on that beach all right so what's the personality disorder histrionic maybe extreme narcissism wait derrick i know your trial record okay yeah you're not

gonna win on a narcissistic personality disorder because jurors will hate somebody you know narcissus the greek player in mythology who fell in love with his own reflection and ultimately wanted to get closer and closer to his own reflection, fell into the water and I think died. That's the genesis of the narcissistic personality moniker. So somebody thinking of just himself, that's not convincing me. Is there anything else you can throw at me? Come on, hit me. I'm ready. So she was taking Effexor and Depakote. And she was... What is that? Ah, they're off-brand...

Depakote. What is that? That was to treat what they thought was episodes of epilepsy and seizures. Didn't have that. Yep. And then the Effexor was treated to help her migraines. It was supposed to help her pain. But those are all, they're both antidepressants. Yeah. And they work with the neurotransmitters in the brain. And she's not only taking them, there was a medical record that she

was abusing them. She ran out when she shouldn't have, but they refilled it. And then a few weeks before this happened, she ran out and stopped all medications. Another red flag. You can't do that. Ask, you know, you can ask the psychiatrist here on the panel. Well, I can tell you this much, Derek Smith. She is feeling no pain in these selfies or on the beach. So you're, and again, this is why he wins cases. He looked right at me and said, her disorder is

she thinks about herself all the time. Narcissistic. And she has headaches and she was taking epilepsy medication when she really wasn't epileptic and a Flexor.

What was that for, Derek? They treated that off her migraines, right. Okay, so that is not a personality disorder. Dr. Heidi Green, just in the yes-no, does that equal a personality disorder? Migraine meds and epilepsy meds? No. Okay, joining me right now is Barry Golden, former senior inspector, U.S. Marshal Service, owner of Golden Consulting and Investigations.

Barry Golden, this woman was in Puerto Rico. Isn't it true? I mean, you've gone all over the world apprehending violent felons. Isn't it true when you leave, for instance, the Ohio airport and you travel out of the country to another country, you have to be able to show your passport, your ID, probably still your COVID shot proof, all sorts of red tape you have to go through to get into Puerto Rico, even though it's one of our territories. Isn't that true? That is true, Nancy. Thank you for having me. And those are the things that I thought of when I looked at this case. And the first first and foremost, she thought about the welfare of this child by preparing some bottles of milk or formula,

because she thought right then and there before she left for the airport she packed her luggage put these bottles into the playpen and then thought well she needs something to to drink she's gonna need something and then she completely forgot about it packed her luggage got in a taxi or drove herself to the airport and then went through the airport like you said like normal people she did the things that normal people of a normal mental capacity do. Go through TSA, hop on an airplane. She didn't go through TSA with a bazooka or handguns or something like that. Crazy. She went as a normal person, threw the checkpoint, got on a plane, didn't cause any problems on an airplane, landed in Puerto Rico and did all the things that people do on vacation,

go to the beach. She cared for herself. She did not take a shower for 10 days. Okay. She ate for 10 days. She did all these things that normal people do. And then she comes back and she freaks out that her baby is dead. she gets home. It took her 10 days until she finds out, sees her baby lying there in filth to realize this. And then she goes haywire. Guys, I want you to hear Anna Faraglia, the prosecutor in this case, listen to what she said. Crystal Candelaria left the state of Ohio on 6-4-2023. She leaves because there is a receipt that's found in her car that she is in Taylor, Michigan. Unbeknownst to Ms. Candelario, her neighbors had ring doorbell and the Cleveland Police Department Homicide Unit has gone through 648 hours and videos of the ring doorbell which you're going to see in this presentation.

The state goes through nearly 700 hours of ring doorbell video until they hear the baby Jaylene screaming for food for water for mommy anything and more from Anna Feraglia listen with regards to miss Candelaria she returns to Cuyahoga County on 6-6 at 741 a.m. So at this particular point, we have reason to believe that this child was left alone for two days now, and she returns on 6-6, 2023. Additional cameras show her again at 1151 on 66 and on 524 of 66. She is taking a suitcase and now leaving Cuyahoga County. Sia New Yorker joining us, anchor multimedia reporter, WOIO-TV in Cleveland. Sia, could you describe the condition Jaylene was in when authorities found her? It was heartbreaking. They found the baby severely dehydrated, starved, 13 pounds, fingernails,

oral cavity, caked in feces, her own feces. And I mean, it was awful. It was awful. And, you know, we knew pieces of that, but to see photos and to hear those cries, it was devastating to hear that in the courtroom. I witnessed many of the law enforcement that were there wiping away tears and just mouths hanging open. This little girl's cries echoed through the streets of her neighborhood in the dead of the night. This baby girl whimpered, she screamed, she howled, she cried, but no one came to her rescue. Why? Her mother, Crystal Candelario, was away on a 10-day summer vacation and left her alone in a pack and play with a few bottles of milk. That's all. The 16-month-old baby girl screaming, including around 1 a.m., two days after mommy leaves her. But where is mommy? Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in Puerto Rico with a male friend. After a few days

at the beach, then another stop to Detroit where she finds her baby caked in feces, her own feces where apparently the baby tried to eat her own feces to live. To Dr. Eric Eason, renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Eason, death by starvation or dehydration is a slow and painful death. Describe. Yes. So your body runs out of fluids and the body runs out of electrolytes. And it takes a long time for that to occur. And yeah, it's a slow and painful way to go. Very unfortunate.

Doctor, according to documents we've managed to obtain, this little 16 month old girl, Jaylene, was emaciated with sunken eyes, dry lips, and feces in her mouth and fingernails. She weighed seven pounds less than she did at her last doctor's visit. Seven pounds less. What does that mean? I mean, she lost a lot of weight due to lack of nourishment. You know, she was left with just that bottle of formula. But when that ran out, she had to then get energy from whatever muscle mass or fatty tissue was left. And then when that was all depleted, death is going to occur because there's nothing left to prolong life. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. So when we look at these items from her phone, her actions indicate to us that she is in Puerto Rico having a good time with friends.

And that there is not a care in the world about the 16-month-old that was left alone in the pack and play. These pictures show somebody who is showing some discretion and judgment because she's having a good time. Meanwhile, this child is in a pack and play. See a New Yorker joining us, WIO TV. What is the prosecutor talking about? Anna Faraglia, what is she talking about items from mommy's phone? She's talking about all of the social media posts. She's talking about all the photos that she posted while she was away in Puerto Rico and Detroit, the receipts, the phone calls she made. She was, you know, laying out all of the evidence. What were the pictures and photos?

She was on the beach. She was, you know, with different friends. She was smiling. She was taking selfies. She was having a, you know, it looked like she was having a lovely time. Wow. Okay, Derek Smith, you got assigned. You took this case.

How do you, and I'm going to withhold judgment. I'm curious. How do you fight a case where your defense is going to be some sort of mental impairment or, as you said, personality disorder where a jury is going to say, hey, do I believe you or my lion eyes when I'm looking at all these selfies and the good times she's having in Puerto Rico? Hey, you ever been through you ever been on an international flight? I have. I took one recently and nearly got arrested in Aruba with Natalie Holloway's mother. It's taken them all this time. They still haven't arrested Jorn Vandersloot for murder, but they wanted to arrest me and Natalie's mother.

That said, I had to go through a lot of CRAP, crap, to get to Aruba through customs, through this, through that. How do you fight a case full of phone evidence when you're claiming personality disorder? You don't. What do you mean by that? You don't.

You can't fight obvious facts. I mean, you go in there and try to make up stories that are totally off, out of somewhere. No one's going to believe you. You're going to lose your credibility right from the start. You cannot dispute indisputable facts. It just can't happen. Yeah, you know what? You're right, Derek.

And I think that's why you win so many cases, because you take what you've got and then you work with that and you spin it into the best scenario that you can. So working with these facts, I hear Dr. Heidi Green jumping in. Go ahead, Dr. Green. Yes, I just wanted to mention that people with personality disorders are everywhere. They aren't murdering people. It's a fairly common mental health condition, as is anxiety, as is depression. And even if this mother had, let's say, all of the mental health conditions that have been thrown out here, drug abuse, depression, narcissistic personality, borderline personality disorder. None of these things make a person a murderer. And what's important to remember is that she had 10 days here.

All she needed was one second, one second of clarity that said, oh my gosh, I need to tell someone. I need to tell someone I'm with. I need to call 911. I need to call my doctor. I need to call a family member. She wasn't psychotic. At least her attorney hasn't said that. She didn't suffer from a cognitive impairment. At least her attorney hasn't said that. And so it's difficult to believe that even if she had multiple mental health conditions, that over the course of 10 days, she didn't have a single second of clarity that would that would result in her telling someone that her baby needed help. Guys, take a listen to Prosecutor Anna Faraglia. Now we turn our attention to June 16th at 7.36 a.m.

She is back in Cuyahoga County. Her car reappears in front of her house. She goes in and she finds her daughter dead. She takes the time to redress her. And then she calls 911. Barry Golden, Derek Smith, contests that. He is Candelario's lawyer. He said the redressing did not occur. And there's a reason he's picking that particular fact to dispute. His claim is that

defense claim is that his client had multiple personality disorders and she was possibly abusing prescription drugs that put her in an altered mental state. He is contesting. He's going along with the photo evidence that he cannot refute. He's going along with the text evidence that he cannot refute. But he is challenging that one fact by the prosecutor for a very critical reason, because if his client took the time in a moment of lucidity and sanity to redress the child, Barry, and she clearly knew the implications of what she had done and tried to cover it up. Agree, disagree, and why? Why would the prosecutor bring those facts into a court of law to a judge if they weren't true? The investigators went to that crime scene and that would have been easy to determine whether those clothes have been on that child for 10 days with feces and all this stuff all over the clothes or if the clothes were clean that's clear and concise evidence right there that either she changed the child or there

were feces if this child had feces in her mouth, on her body, everywhere. They would have been on the clothes as well. And if these clothes were clean, then she obviously changed the baby. I don't know why the prosecutor would present these facts in a courtroom to the judge if they weren't facts that came from the investigators. Guys, I want you to hear Candelario on body cam what she says to police when getting pain. Okay. Pain. About what time was that last night? Maybe at 7 or 8 p.m. Okay. So she was screaming like that, you know, probably for pain or something like that.

In this morning when I wake up, you know, I took her in the morning for a day in the morning. And she wake up. And when I see her, I see she looks like a really, really dry. See a New Yorker joining us, anchor, multimedia reporter, WOIO-TV there in this jurisdiction. See ya. Now, I know hearing that statement that his client gave to police was like a knife to the heart because you can no longer claim, hey, she's not lucid. She's crazy. She's on these meds. She's not supposed to be on them. She's out of her mind,

personality disorder, migraines, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here she is flat out lying and very lucid and coherent. And I would like to say, uh, very articulate as she lies through her teeth about being there the night before. What is this statement? What does it mean, Sia New Yorker? The video doesn't lie. There were videos. There were phone calls. There were records. The photos, you know, she's sitting there telling the investigators this story, and it's not matching up. And they know it. They know it's not matching up. It didn't make any sense.

To Dr. Eric Eason, renowned pathologist and consultant. Dr. Eason, we have been talking about the mom and how she lied in her romantic getaway with an unnamed male boyfriend. But I want to bring us back to reality. Now, I know this is a part of your job that you don't like. And I know, Derek Smith, that you don't want to hear this. But these are the facts. How would Jaylene have been found? What state would she have been in? You heard emaciated, this little baby's eyes sunken in, feces under her nails, in her mouth, dried, where apparently she was trying to eat anything she could find. Describe the scene. Well, I think we heard a lot about it.

You know, feces in the bassinet, or it was a pack and play, I think it was. You know, this question about the clothing and whether she was redressed. A lot of that is going to be found in the autopsy report. So it's going to describe whatever clothing the child was wearing when death occurred. And there's going to be clues in the autopsy report about when the death actually occurred. So if the death occurred, you know, several days before being found, then you're probably going to start seeing signs of decomposition on the body, skin discoloration, and what we call skin slippage, where the skin will start to peel off itself.

Dr. Eason, please just don't trip over that so lightly. Skin, as you say, and this is certainly a euphemism, skin slippage. That sounds like maybe your skirt slipped, but this is when your skin comes apart. You're decaying, and your skin... Peels off itself, yes. Slips. Right. Right.

And it's rare to see signs of decomposition in an infant or a child because most of these deaths occur, and the child will be found within minutes or hours later. So you can have infants found in an unsafe sleep environment, you know, when the death occurs, you know, minutes or hours later, they're found, but it's rare to have a child or an infant be found decomposing. It's pretty rare. And that's what you're going to see when the body starts decomposing. Derek Smith is a very well-known defense attorney who took on Crystal Candelario's case. Derek, I just got to ask you something.

You got in court and you gave it your all. You did everything you could for her. Not this case, because I know you can't comment on this case, but how do you deal with defending other cases with such disturbing facts? Because I know as a prosecutor, sometimes going over the courthouse, I'd have to just pull off the road and just sit there like, what happened? How could somebody do this? But in your situation, you have to keep going. Yeah, it wasn't easy. Fortunately, a colleague of mine, Patrick Milligan, and I, I mean, we both have children.

His are a little older than mine, but we were able to kind of help each other out when we were struggling with these pictures and some of these facts, you know, it's good to have, you know, other, other attorneys to help you kind of through these things because we're, we're human too. And it's, yeah, it's very difficult to, to see. And even now going over it again, I mean, a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out what the hell she was thinking or what would would what would possess somebody to do something but i gotta give it to you i gotta give it to you derrick smith

while i completely disagree with you and i certainly do not want your job you got in there and you fought you fought uh and you got her the best deal she could have gotten. That judge, I got to say, really gave her hell at sentencing. And you stood right beside her throughout. See a New Yorker. This is a very tough case for me as a mom when I think about my twins at that age. They were really premature, so they were really small. But when I hear that ring cam from the neighbor of the baby just screaming for something to eat or drink or mommy or somebody, and she died in that pack and play day after day after day, losing seven pounds in 10 days. Tell me, in that courtroom, how did the judge respond?

It was gut-wrenching. And the judge even said in his sentencing, he said the baby waited, baby Jalen waited for as long as she could. You know, 10 days you were gone, but, you know, after the medical examiner and everybody laid out and he was back with the ophthalmologist, she waited for as long as she could. You know, she suffered a

long and agonizing death, but she waited for somebody to come help her. And there was no help. Her mother was nowhere to be found. Oh, you know, I wish I could just take this baby and raise her myself. But now this baby is in heaven and mommy is behind bars. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart podcast