Anthony v. State

• Decision Date: 15 December 2009
• Docket Number: No. 2008-KA-01348-COA.,2008-KA-01348-COA.
• Citation: 23 So.3d 611
• Parties: Fonshanta ANTHONY, Appellant v. STATE of Mississippi, Appellee.
• Court: Mississippi Court of Appeals

23 So.3d 611

Fonshanta ANTHONY, Appellant v. STATE of Mississippi, Appellee.

No. 2008-KA-01348-COA.

Court of Appeals of Mississippi.

December 15, 2009.

Hunter Nolan Aikens, attorney for appellant.

Office of the Attorney General by Laura Hogan Tedder, attorney for appellee.

Before MYERS, P.J., ISHEE and MAXWELL, JJ.

MAXWELL, J., for the Court.

¶ 1. Fonshanta Anthony was convicted in Marshall County Circuit Court of felony child abuse and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC). On appeal, Anthony argues: (1) the circuit court erred in admitting a medical report entitled "Abuse/Neglect Risk Factor Assessment" (abuse record); (2) the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to sustain her conviction of felony child abuse; and (3) the verdict is against the overwhelming weight of the evidence.

¶ 2. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶ 3. A Marshall County grand jury charged Anthony with felony child abuse. Specifically, the indictment alleged that Anthony intentionally burned her nine-month-old infant son, B.A.¹ While Anthony's reports of the incident vary, expert medical testimony established that B.A. was forcefully held down in scalding bath water and sustained graphic burn injuries to over sixty percent of his body. The severe burns caused much of B.A.'s skin to fall off, and required skin grafts to over fifty percent of his body. The only people present at the time B.A. was burned were B.A.'s mother, Anthony, and B.A.'s two-year-old brother, J.A.

¶ 4. The events underlying the felony-child-abuse charge took place on July 18, 2005, in Byhalia, Mississippi. That night, Anthony brought B.A. to her neighbor Cassandra Watkins's apartment, and asked Watkins to call 911. Anthony attempted to hand B.A. to Watkins, but Watkins refused to hold the injured child, and instead called 911. Watkins testified B.A. was screaming, his skin was falling off, and he was bleeding. Anthony told Watkins that J.A. had turned the hot water on B.A.

¶ 5. Officer David Taylor of the Byhalia Police Department was the first law enforcement officer on the scene. Ambulance personnel arrived about the same time. Taylor testified that he heard B.A. screaming the whole time he was being attended to by paramedics and observed that B.A. was obviously in pain.

¶ 6. Officer Clyde Gunter of the Byhalia Police Department arrived when paramedics were preparing B.A. to be airlifted to Le Bonheur Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He was told B.A. was in critical condition and had been burned in the bathroom upstairs in Anthony's apartment. Officer Gunter looked in Anthony's tub and noted it was empty. He testified that it looked like a washcloth had been used to stop water from draining from the tub. Officer Gunter found brown pieces of B.A.'s skin in the tub. He then inspected the hot water heater and discovered the temperature was set at approximately 160 degrees. After investigating the apartment, Officer Gunter overheard Anthony telling a companion: "I wouldn't do anything deliberately to hurt my child." B.A. was then transferred by helicopter to Memphis.

¶ 7. In Anthony's initial statement to police, she claimed she ran bath water and placed her two-year-old son, J.A., in the tub. She then left her apartment to take trash to a garbage dumpster. When she returned she placed B.A. in the tub with J.A. At that point, Anthony claimed she left both children in the bathtub unsupervised and went to their room to gather night-time clothes. Anthony explained she then heard water running and yelled to her two-year-old son, J.A., to turn it off. According to Anthony, J.A. stated that B.A. had "boo booed" in the tub. When Anthony walked into the bathroom, she noticed pieces of B.A.'s skin were floating in the tub. She then pulled him out of the water.

¶ 8. While at Le Bonheur Hospital in Memphis, Anthony told a different story. There she claimed she had placed both J.A. and B.A. in the back of the bathtub, and then left the apartment to take out the garbage to a dumpster. She maintained that B.A. had moved from the back of the tub to the front of the tub, and J.A., her two-year-old son, turned on the hot water. A treating physician who examined B.A. at Le Bonheur Hospital made a notation in the records that "the injuries do not fit the explanation given" by Anthony.

¶ 9. B.A.'s burns were so severe that on July 19, 2005, he had to be transported to Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas, which specializes in treating burned children. At Shriners Hospital, Anthony gave a third slightly different version of the events giving rise to B.A.'s burns. Anthony told a treating psychologist she had placed J.A. alone in the tub prior to taking the trash to the dumpster. She also claimed that upon her return, she placed B.A. in the back of the tub, and then left the bathroom to get the children's night-time clothes. Anthony reported she heard the water turn on, and it ran for approximately thirty to sixty seconds, and then "cut off." When the water was turned off, she heard J.A. yell that B.A. had used the bathroom in the tub. Anthony indicated B.A. was sitting in the front of the bathtub, in a relaxed position under the faucet, and J.A. was standing directly behind B.A. in the tub. She also claimed B.A. was not crying at this time, but she noticed "brown stuff" floating in the tub. According to Anthony, the water was one to two inches deep and was not hot to the touch. She noticed B.A.'s skin was pink, so she pulled him out of the tub and called 911.

¶ 10. A few days after the burning incident, Anthony reported essentially the same version she had given at Shriners Hospital to Patricia Amosike of the Marshall County Department of Human Services (DHS). Specifically, she told Amosike that J.A. was in the tub with B.A. when Anthony returned to the bathroom and found B.A. burned.

¶ 11. Amosike conducted a physical examination of J.A. the day after the burning incident, but found no burns on J.A.'s body. Amosike found the lack of any sign of burns on J.A. to contradict Anthony's account that both children were in the tub together when B.A. sustained his devastating burns.

¶ 12. Without objection from Anthony, the circuit court accepted Dr. Art Sanford of Shriners Hospital as an expert in the field of "general surgery including burn injuries and pediatric burns and related fields." Dr. Sanford treated B.A. at Shriners Hospital. He testified that over sixty percent of B.A.'s body was burned, and that B.A. had sustained "full thickness burns," which are burns that do not heal, on fifty percent of his body.

¶ 13. Doctors performed five surgeries on B.A. during his one-month stay at Shriners Hospital. In between B.A.'s surgeries, B.A. required almost daily scrubbing of his damaged areas to remove dead skin. Over fifty percent of B.A.'s body required skin grafts. Dr. Sanford also explained B.A. will require additional operations to restore function to his hands and feet. Because the skin grafts will not grow at the same rate as B.A.'s body, he will also have to undergo regular surgeries to release the grafts.

¶ 14. According to Dr. Sanford, B.A.'s burns were straight-line demarcation burns, meaning they were in a straight line around his torso and continued from his chest down. He also testified a child B.A.'s age would not sit still in scalding water, and would have flailed around in the water to avoid being burned. In Dr. Sanford's opinion, flailing would have resulted in burns unlike those found on B.A.'s body.

¶ 15. Dr. Sanford also noted the burns on B.A.'s extremities were mirror-image burns, meaning that each arm and leg was very similarly burned, consistent with a victim being held down in scalding water. Furthermore, Dr. Sanford testified that the burns were of uniform depth, which showed B.A.'s entire lower body was exposed to the same amount of water at the same temperature for the same length of time. In Dr. Sanford's opinion, the uniform depth of the burns was consistent with forced immersion. He also noted B.A. had donut-shaped scars on his buttocks and areas of spared skin in the groin and wrist areas — additional signs of forced immersion.

¶ 16. Dr. Sanford noticed during B.A.'s hospital stay that there was a concern among his staff that B.A. was more agitated and less comfortable in the presence of his mother than with the hospital caregivers.

¶ 17. Dr. Sanford was also troubled by Anthony's inconsistent explanations of how the burn occurred. He found it was highly suspicious that some of Anthony's accounts placed J.A. in the tub with B.A. In his opinion, had J.A. been in the tub as well, he would have also sustained injuries. Dr. Sanford also opined it was unlikely a two-year-old child would have the fine motor skills to turn on the hot-water faucet. Dr. Sanford maintained that had hot water been turned on while B.A. was in the tub, he would have exhibited a spectrum or varying degrees of burns, rather than the uniform burns he sustained.

¶ 18. Dr. Sanford testified that in his expert opinion, B.A. was intentionally burned and had been "folded up" and placed in the hot water. As Dr. Sanford put it, B.A. would have had to have been held down, and "[t]here [had] to be force pushing his chest, his torso forward with him in a sitting position."

DISCUSSION

I. Admission of the Abuse Record

¶ 19. Anthony does not take issue with the trial court's acceptance of Dr. Sanford as an expert witness in the field of pediatric burns. Instead, her assignments of error are mostly centered around the admission, during the State's direct examination of Dr. Sanford, of the abuse record created by B.A.'s caregivers at Shriners Hospital. First, she argues the circuit court erred in admitting the abuse record because it contained inadmissible hearsay, which she claims was highly prejudicial. Second, she argues admission of the record violated...