ROBERT WILLETT - rwillett@newsobserver.com
Ashley Palmatier a day-care worker who had two-year-old Cassidy Young in her class testifies in court on Friday Feb. 17, 2012 in Raleigh, N.C., that Cassidy, playing with two dolls several days after her mother was found dead, acted out her mother being beaten. Cassidy Young was found unharmed inside her home when her mother was found dead in a bedroom. The dolls in front of Palmatier were entered as evidence in the second trial of Jason Young in the murder of his wife Michelle Young.
RALEIGH -- Jason Young’s toddler daughter banged two small dolls against each other several days after her mother’s death, saying “Mommy’s getting a spanking for biting,” the girl’s former day-care teacher testified Friday.
Jurors were not in the Wake County courtroom as Ashley Palmatier, a 27-year-old day-care provider for Cassidy Young, described the incident for Judge Donald Stephens.
Prosecutors, in a departure from their strategy during the first murder trial of Jason Young, told defense attorneys this week of their plans to call Palmatier. The defense objected, saying not only would Palmatier be offering hearsay, she also would be relaying to the jury statements made by a 2 1/2-year-old child.
“There’s a potential competency issue here,” said Mike Klinkosum, one of the defense attorneys for Young.
Young, charged with killing his wife, Michelle, in 2006, is on trial again after his first trial ended with the jury deadlocked 8-4 for acquittal.
Howard Cummings, Wake County’s chief assistant district attorney, told the judge Friday that he thought Palmatier’s testimony would show two things: That Cassidy saw her mother being bludgeoned to death and that the killer did not go after the child.
Cassidy, according to testimony for Meredith Fisher, the child’s aunt and the younger sister of Michelle Young, wriggled out from under the covers of her parents’ bed in clean clothes and unharmed physically hours after her mother’s death.
Prosecutors contend Jason Young bludgeoned his wife to death on Nov. 3, 2006, after making a 160-mile trip after midnight from a hotel in Hillsville, Va. The prosecution’s theory is that Young then cleaned himself up, got in his white Ford Explorer, stopped for gas in a small Stokes County town at 5:30 a.m., then proceeded northwest into Virginia for business calls later that day.
In the first trial eight months ago, Young testified that he did not kill his wife or have anything to do with her death.
If Palmatier testifies next week, according to prosecutor’s plans, it will be a block of testimony the first jury did not hear.
Judge Stephens, in a late-afternoon hearing to see what Palmatier might say, agreed to allow jurors to hear only part of her account of Cassidy’s statements that day.
Emotional testimony
The surprise move by prosecutors came on the 10th day of testimony in a trial that’s expected to last at least through next week.
It is unclear whether Jason Young will take the stand again in his defense.
Palmatier was very emotional Friday as she described Cassidy’s actions several days after her mother’s death. She was at a table with one or two other children but playing by herself with small dolls.
The teacher walked up to Cassidy that day, as she did with all the other children, and asked: “What’re you doing?”
Cassidy, according to her testimony, held a female doll with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail in one hand and another female doll, an older woman with short light-colored hair, in her other hand.
The doll with light-colored hair was folded into a toy chair. Cassidy knocked that doll against the other one, according to Palmatier saying: “Mommy is getting a spanking for biting.”
She also said: “Mommy has boo-boos all over,” echoing a phrase Cassidy is heard saying several days earlier while her aunt is talking with emergency dispatchers minutes after finding Michelle Young dead.
Palmatier said she called another day-care worker over to the table and they just watched as Cassidy put the dark-haired doll, the one she referred to as the “mommy,” face-down into a small toy bed on the second floor of the multi-story dollhouse.
“Neither of us really knew how to respond,” Palmatier said.
Later that day, she said, Cassidy again spoke of her mother without any prompting. She awoke from a nap and started talking. “She said, ‘Mommy’s in the bed, boo-boos all over,’” Palmatier continued. Then, with no apparent reason for changing her conversation stream, Cassidy began talking about farm animals and “Daddy bringing them fruit snacks.”
Cassidy, according to the testimony, never identified the lighter-haired doll, nor did she speak of its gender. She had pulled the doll out of a bucket with many other dolls, Palmatier said, including a male doll dressed as a doctor in scrubs.
‘A child acting out’
Stephens said he will allow testimony about what Cassidy said while playing with the dolls, but not what she was heard saying after her nap.
The doll play, he said, “is consistent with a child acting out related to a specific event.”
Prosecutors also might call the other day-care worker, Cummings said. The judge told him to make sure defense attorneys had an idea what that testimony might include so they could deal with any objections outside the jury’s presence.
The testimony about Cassidy came after prosecutors called several witnesses Friday to describe forensic evidence gathered in the case. They focused on shoe prints, palm prints and fingerprints found at the crime scene.
Defense attorneys contend that DNA evidence and prints from unknown people found on the Youngs’ back door, on a shoeshine box in Jason Young’s bedroom closet and on a medicine cap in Cassidy’s bedroom show someone else was in the house.
Prosecutors also drew attention to two sets of prints found at the crime scene — a partial palm print on the molding of Jason Young’s bedroom closet door and two fingerprints from a left hand on drywall to the left of that door frame.
An investigator said there was not enough detail from those prints to offer conclusive identifications, but he could not rule out Jason Young as the person who left them.
