Haleigh Poutre's stepfather convicted of child abuse
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff
SPRINGFIELD - A jury found Haleigh Poutre's stepfather guilty today of child abuse three years after the case drew national attention when the state almost took the comatose, then 11-year-old girl off life support.
 Jason Strickland |
Jason Strickland, a 34-year-old auto mechanic, was convicted of five of the six counts he faced and could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison. The jury decided that Strickland was responsible for causing substantial bodily injury to Haleigh, though he may not have been the one who actually inflicted the near-fatal brain injury that had put the Westfield girl into a coma. The jurors determined that he recklessly permitted Haleigh's brain injury to occur even if he did not directly cause the trauma.
Strickland, who testified last week that he did nothing to harm the girl, remained stoic and displayed no reaction when the jury announced its verdict after the three-week trial in Hampden County Superior Court.
Strickland was immediately taken into custody as Judge Judd Carhart revoked his bail. For a few months prior to the start of the trial, he was allowed to live and work in North Carolina, where his parents reside.
As Strickland was led away in handcuffs, he looked back at his parents in the audience. His father wept, while his mother showed little visible reaction. Later, when she left the courtroom, she sobbed uncontrollably in the arms of one of the defense counsel's aides. Strickland is expected to be held at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow until sentencing.
By convicting Strickland, the jury showed that it did not believe his four hours of testimony last Friday in which he depicted himself as a hard-working breadwinner with a detached, but kindly, role in domestic life. He had said that in the five years he lived in the Westfield home, he noticed bruises and burn marks on Haleigh, but accepted the explanation of Haleigh's adoptive mother, Holli Strickland, that the girl had a psychological disorder causing her to hurt herself. The stepfather's defense focused on showing that if anyone was harming Haleigh in the home it was his wife, and that she kept her cruel acts hidden from her husband.
Strickland, however, denied ever seeing his wife, Holli, strike Haleigh and never offered an explanation for how Haleigh became unconscious on a September weekend in 2005.
 Haleigh Poutre |
The adoptive mother died in an apparent murder-suicide with her grandmother shortly after being charged in 2005 with abusing Haleigh.
Prosecutor Laurel Brandt depicted Holli and Jason Strickland as abusers who inflicted severe harm on Haleigh over a five-year period. The attacks began as soon as Jason moved into the home, Brandt alleged. Brandt argued that even if Holli Strickland was the prime abuser, her husband had to know about it.
The verdict caps a child abuse case that included one of the nation's most surprising endings to an end-of-life controversy. The Supreme Judicial Court authorized the removal of Haleigh's life support in January 2006 at the request of the state's child-protection agency, which said the girl was trapped in an irreversible vegetative state.
Just as the decision came down, Haleigh began to respond to commands and follow objects with her eyes. The girl, now 14, can speak simple sentences. One of the most dramatic pieces of evidence in the trial was a video that showed Haleigh feeding herself and using an alphabet board to communicate. She attends a day school in a pediatric rehabilitation facility, and the state says it is pursuing an adoptive home for her or some kind of other long-term residential placement.
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