A jury has found a 24-year-old Bartlesville man accused in the death of a toddler boy last winter guilty of first degree murder.
The 12-member jury announced its verdict at around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly six hours after it went into deliberation following closing arguments that afternoon in the trial of former Washington County jail detention officer Joshua Benton.
Benton was arrested in December 2010 following the death of 3-year-old Christian Norris.
According to the Washington County District Attorney Kevin Buchanan, the sentence passed will be life in prison.
Following the reading of the verdict, the judge ordered a pre-sentencing investigation and ordered Benton to reappear in court May 11. Benton was then immediately remanded to Washington County custody.
After a polling of the jury during which the judge asked each member if the announced verdict was their verdict, he thanked them.
"This is the most difficult can I can remember because it involved the death of a 3-year-old," he said.
Later on, he said he hopes everybody involved in the trial will be able to take home in their minds a picture they saw earlier during the trial of the boy riding a horse.
Thursday, the third day of the Benton's trial in Washington Court District Court, concluded a day-and-a-half of testimony, the last testimony having been given by Benton.
During his time on the stand, Benton maintained his argument that he did not kill the boy and said he did not know what had happened to cause Christian's death.
Police arrested Benton Dec. 8, 2010, following an investigation into the death of a 3-year-old child the previous day when the dispatch office received a call from a home in Bartlesville's Oak Park community reporting a child not breathing.
When emergency responders arrived to the residence in the 400 block of Northwest Aledo, they found 3-year-old Christian Norris unresponsive and transported him to Jane Phillips Medical Center where he later was pronounced dead.
Police made the arrest the following day after results from their investigation coupled with a preliminary medical examiner's report, which read the child had died from complications due to blunt force trauma to the lower back, implicated Benton in the toddler's death.
During a bond hearing following the arrest, Bartlesville Police investigator Steve Birminghom told the court the autopsy showed the child had a “severely broken lower back” and that the boy's right kidney had failed to function.
Testimony for the trial included a number of individuals including police officers, investigators, the boy's mother Shannon Hicks and an expert witness — a doctor from the medical examiner's office who told the court the boy had di ed due to "a complete break of the back and breaking of all the blood vessels associated with the area" resulting in internal hemorrhaging.
The spinal cord itself he found "stretched significantly." The fracture and injuries, he explained, were due to a hyperextension of the back to the degree that it caused the back to snap.
Hicks told the court she had left Benson with the child Monday night while she went to Walmart before Benton left for work. It was reportedly at this time that Benton gave the toddler a bath and put him to bed.
Later when she returned, the child began acting sick, throwing up and suffering from diarrhea. Additionally, she said she had to carry the boy around. She was up all night with the 3-year-old, she said, and texted the boy's condition to Benton who was at that time at work. Benton texted her back telling her to give food and drink to Christian, the court was told.
During closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Will Drake referred to the medical examiner's testimony that the child had died due to a breaking of the lower back from hyperextension of the spine — evidence to an “unreasonable use of force.” He recalled the doctor pointing out the absence of any outside signs of injury, such as a bruise as would occur in an accidental injury or fall.
“The only way it happened was a classic hyperextension fracture,” caused by action described by Benton during his video interview where he said he held the boy following a bath, and pushed the boy's torso back, said Drake.
“Two people knew what happened and one of them is sitting right there,” he told the jury, while gesturing toward Benton.
Benton's attorney Kristi Sanders in her closing argument told jurors the case did not begin that Tuesday more than a year ago with the death of the child but rather that previous Friday when the boy went to stay at a relative's house. She said the boy came home Sunday night with a back injury, a bump on his back — something she said the prosecution ignored.
Referring to Benton's testimony, she said Monday morning Christian was using the bathroom more than normal and acting sickly and tired. By Monday night, he was throwing up,
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