By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News

Published March 25, 2008

The fate of an Arkansas man who admitted burning his infant daughter in a microwave oven is in a jury’s hands.

Attorneys gave their closing arguments Monday in the case of Joshua Mauldin, who faces a charge that could carry anything from probation to life in prison.

Police on May 15 charged Mauldin, 20, with injury to a child after he told detective Holly Johnson he had become “agitated” while alone in a Seawall Boulevard motel room with 2-month-old daughter Ana.

Mauldin told police he threw and hit the baby before putting her first into the room’s safe, then into the refrigerator and, finally, into the microwave oven. The child survived the attack but was badly burned and is now in foster care.

Mauldin, charged with injury to a child, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

After attorneys finished closing arguments, just before noon Monday, Judge Susan Criss sent jurors to lunch. They returned about 1:15 p.m. and deliberated until 5 p.m. They will return today to continue considering the case.

However, Criss met with one of the jurors before releasing the 12 of them.

“I’d been informed that (the juror) had talked about the case to a relative, which the juror denied,” Criss said. “From what the juror said, the case did briefly come up, but there was no discussion of it.”

Still, Criss issued a warning to all 12 jurors — warning them not to watch, hear or read news accounts of the case and not to discuss the case with anyone — before releasing them for the day.

The judge said the penalty would be “contempt and jail, and I’m very serious about that.”

The insanity plea required the defense to show Mauldin, more likely than not, was so afflicted he did not know what he was doing was wrong at the time.

It was a burden of proof that prosecutor Kayla Allen told jurors the defense had failed to meet.

“Not only do you have no credible evidence of insanity, you have zero evidence of insanity,” Allen argued Monday morning, referring to defense witness Dr. Michael Fuller.

Fuller, a professor of psychiatry with the University of Texas Medical Branch, testified as a defense witness and said that if Mauldin’s description of his physical symptoms at the time were correct, he could have been suffering from a neurological disorder that left him unable to control his actions.

However, Fuller, appointed by Criss to examine Mauldin, submitted a report to the court stating that he had found no credible evidence that Mauldin “met the statutory requirements” for insanity.

The jury has three options — guilty, not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. If they find Mauldin guilty, jurors must then decide whether the microwave oven constituted a deadly weapon.

If they find it to be a deadly weapon, Mauldin would have to serve half of any sentence before becoming eligible for parole. If they do not, he would become eligible for parole after serving a quarter of any sentence the jury would assess.

Defense attorney Sam Cammack III told jurors that prosecutors had not presented them with every available piece of evidence, saying jurors “got about 25 percent of their case.”

Cammack argued that considering gaps in the case against his client did not equate to minimizing the girl’s injuries.

“That little baby did not deserve whatever happened to her in that room,” he said.

Cammack said that doubts remained as to whether Mauldin really placed the child in the oven, saying it was too small to fit the child.

However, prosecutor Vandiver argued that just two months earlier, infant Ana had fit into something even smaller — her mother’s womb. Vandiver also said Mauldin telling tales of sunburns and scalding water for four days before admitting to burning her in the oven kept investigators from immediately knowing what to look for.

“Our officers and investigators are not psychics, so when the defendant knows what happened and will not say so, what are we to do?” she asked.

The severity of the charge depends on how badly the child victim is hurt. Because of the severity of Ana’s injuries, the charge carries a possible prison term of five to 99 years. But because Mauldin has no prior felony convictions, he would also be eligible for probation if the jury finds him guilty.

The child lost most of her left ear and had to have skin grafts on her left arm, in addition to second-degree burns on much of that arm and shoulder.

She has recovered and is now in foster care with relatives who are sworn to have no contact with Mauldin or his wife, Eva.

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor