Prosecutors differ with judge who found incident was accidental

05:24 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
By TIARA M. ELLIS / The Dallas Morning News
tellis@dallasnews.com

Paul Alexis says he just wanted his children back. So when a Collin County family court judge returned them, essentially clearing the Louisiana man of any wrongdoing in connection with his son's head injury, he thought his worries were over.

But now he is facing criminal charges – and up to life in prison – for the same incident, in which he maintains that he slipped while carrying his newborn and hit the boy's head against a dresser.

The difference?

The first judge handled the civil case, which dealt with child placement.

Now, a second judge is charged with handling the same matter based on an indictment by a Collin County grand jury, which determined there's enough evidence to take the case to trial.

"I thought everything was over with," said Mr. Alexis, 24. "All of a sudden, my wife gets a phone call.

"They're telling her that my case is up for an indictment hearing criminally. She just about panicked."

A pretrial conference for Mr. Alexis, who was indicted on two counts of injury to a child, is scheduled for Oct. 29.

Collin County District Attorney John Roach has a policy of not talking about pending cases.

But he stressed that civil and criminal matters are entirely separate and can be addressed independently.

"We are not bound by that [civil] verdict," Mr. Roach said. "Obviously someone in my office thinks that this is a prosecutable case."

George Martinez, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said it's highly unusual for a dismissed civil case to be prosecuted criminally because the burden of proof on the criminal side is so high.

"If he won with the lower burden of proof on the civil side, how can they take it over to the criminal side and expect to make a case when they have to show that it happened beyond a reasonable doubt?" Mr. Martinez said.

It's not unheard of, however, for criminal cases to be later tried in civil court.

One of the well-known examples is the O.J. Simpson case, Mr. Martinez said, in which the criminal proceedings ended in a murder acquittal.

But civil attorneys were able to show in a separate trial that it's more likely than not that Mr. Simpson caused the deaths.

After Hurricane Katrina, Paul and Mindy Alexis left their damaged home in St. Bernard Parish, La., and came to Texas along with hundreds of thousands of others. He got a job in Port Arthur.

Then Hurricane Rita moved them again, this time to North Dallas, near the home of Mr. Alexis' aunt and uncle in Plano, he said.

On Aug. 29, 2006, Mr. Alexis was watching the couple's two children, 20-month-old Hayven and 4-week-old Devin, while his wife went to the store.

Mr. Alexis said he was carrying Devin back to his crib in the bedroom when he slipped on a bedspread pooled at the foot of the bed. He said he fell into the dresser, hitting his elbow and Devin's head.

"Normally, if I wasn't carrying him, I would've caught myself. Holding him, I just tightened up," Mr. Alexis said in a telephone interview from Louisiana, where the family returned earlier this year. "I figured I took the blow. But he kept crying and squirming. I could tell something was wrong."

When Mrs. Alexis returned, he said, they noticed swelling on the back of Devin's head and took him to a hospital. He had a skull fracture, according to court records.

An initial report from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said doctors told them that Devin's injury was not consistent with "a simple fall," as Mr. Alexis described.

The children were placed in foster care and a few weeks later allowed to live with Mr. Alexis' aunt and uncle, Lee and Lisa Jackson. Then the court let Mrs. Alexis, 21, move in with the Jacksons. But her husband was ordered to remain away.

Dr. Jana Long, who performed the Alexises' psychological exam, said in a report to the court that she "believed Mr. Alexis' accounts of the incident were consistent and did not find any information to refute this."

"You go from having a normal life, and in an instant everything is taken from you," Mrs. Alexis said. "You can't even enjoy the time you have [during supervised visits] because it's like you have someone baby-sitting you with your own kids."

After five months of monitoring and drug testing, evaluations and monitored visitations at the Collin County Child Advocacy Center, the Alexis family was reunited in January.

But in August, nearly one year after Devin was hurt, Mr. Alexis was indicted. The criminal proceedings against him have continued despite the earlier ruling because child custody issues and criminal charges are decided separately in cases of alleged abuse.

Stuart L. Brown, a Plano family law attorney who represented Mr. Alexis in the civil case, said the judge told his client that she believed Devin's injury was an accident and made it clear that she wanted the family reunited.

Marc Fratter, Mr. Alexis' criminal defense attorney, has requested that state District Judge Curt Henderson decide the case instead of a jury.

"There is too much evidence that says this was an accident and not enough to say this was not," Mr. Fratter said. "Paul is innocent. He can't have a felony on his record. This is a case that you have to fight."

Devin is now 1, and his sister will be 3 in December.

Their parents say Devin has recovered from his head injury and is doing well.

One week after Mr. and Mrs. Alexis got their children back, they moved back to Louisiana. Mr. Alexis, who is a carpenter, returned to his old job at a refinery and has been rebuilding their home.

During the civil case, Mr. Alexis said, Collin County prosecutors suggested that he was stressed from losing their home to Hurricane Katrina and that might have played a part in his son's injury.

"This is a lot more stressful than Katrina ever was," Mr. Alexis said. "I don't know why they won't just leave me alone."

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor