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Jurors need more time to decide Garner mother's fate
RALEIGH, Aug 19, 2010 (The News and Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The jurors who will decide the fate of the mother from Garner accused of murdering her son and then hiding his death for weeks went home Wednesday evening without rendering a verdict.
Sherita McNeil has been on trial in Wake County Superior Court, accused of killing her son DeVarion Gross, a 19-month-old who was found dead, wrapped in garbage bags and bleach-soaked sheets, in November 2008 in the closet of an apartment where his mother lived.
Public Defender Bryan Colllins has contended that DeVarion died, as his mother told an investigator in a videotaped interview, after jumping off a couch and smacking his head on the table.
Prosecutors contend that McNeil's account does not jibe with what autopsy reports show. Though the toddler's cause of death was ambiguous, medical examiners said, autopsy reports showed broken ribs.
After the jury got the case Wednesday, jurors twice asked Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand whether they could listen again to tapes of phone calls that McNeil had with Ira James, the father of her daughter. James was in federal prison when the calls were made, and they were taped.
During the calls, which took place in mid-November, McNeil tells James that something bad happened, but she does not elaborate other than to say it involved her son, DeVarion, whose nickname was "Poodie."
Then, in a subsequent call, James again mentions McNeil's son and tells her, "No matter what happened, we're going to be together. I could never turn my back on you."
DeVarion's father, Eric Chambers, was in jail at the time.
Prosecutors contend that James and McNeil conspired to say she was raped by DeVarion's father and forced to keep the boy because she was afraid.
"You was raped. You see what I'm saying?" James told McNeil during a call. "You was raped, and you were forced to keep that baby."
Melanie Shekita, the assistant district attorney who tried the case, contends that DeVarion's death was not an accident, saying that if it were, his mother would have called 911.
But in an interview with investigators shortly after the boy's remains were found, McNeil said she picked up the phone to call emergency dispatchers but dropped it out of fear of her son's father.
Family and others testified during the trial that they worried that DaVarion had been a victim of abuse and neglect.
In his closing arguments, Collins conceded that McNeil was guilty of concealing her son's death, a felony.
During the interview with investigators that was videotaped and played during the trial, McNeil said she put her lifeless son in her bed first, then wrapped him later in garbage bags and bleach-soaked sheets to hide his death from people who were in and out of the apartment.
The jury is scheduled to continue its deliberations today.
anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or 919-836-4948
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