Not guilty: Jurors clear boyfriend in baby’s asphyxiation death
Jurors cleared James Fidel Jennings on all charges Thursday for the 2012 death of the 11-month-old boy he was watching for his girlfriend, freeing him after two-and-a-half years in jail.
As he heard “not guilty” of either murder or manslaughter, the 35-year-old Jennings collapsed and sobbed loudly.
Zavion Haywood’s family immediately left the Wake County courtroom upon hearing the verdict. Loud wailing could be heard from the hallways.
After three weeks of trial, jurors spent roughly an hour deciding whether Jennings intentionally caused the baby’s asphyxiation or, as the defense suggested, the infant could have died choking on milk or newly introduced solid food.
Zavion stopped breathing and turned blue in his Raleigh apartment after Jennings took the baby upstairs alone, then brought him down with his face blue and purple. Haywood was declared brain-dead in the hospital later, and his life-support was cut off.
The case hinged on whether Jennings, his mother’s boyfriend, killed Zavion in frustration that morning in 2012 or tried to save the child while he choked on his vomit.
“It’s a tragedy, no question,” defense attorney Edd Roberts told jurors, “and it leaves a hole. ... (But) don’t let emotion spill into the process.”
The trial brought testimony from both a tearful Jennings and Zavion’s cousin, who was only 3 years old at the time.
The cousin’s statements in 2017 helped bring first-degree murder charges against Jennings, and two weeks ago, at age 11, she testified hearing her cousin crying from a room upstairs in their apartment off Glenwood Avenue.
From the witness stand, she told jurors she walked to the room and saw Jennings inside with Zavion, and that her mother’s boyfriend told her to leave and her baby cousin to “shut up.”
From downstairs, Zavion’s grandmother, Kim Bynum, said she heard a thump upstairs before Jennings came down holding the baby.
“The boy did something up in that room,” Bynum said Thursday after hearing the verdict. “I don’t know what it was.”
Assistant District Attorney Melanie Shekita described the case as a “frustrating moment” in which Jennings caused the death of an otherwise healthy, happy child.
“You’ve got a fussy baby,” Shekita said. “You’re tired. He’s cranky with you, and you just want to get to bed.”
But Roberts countered that Zavion’s mother took him to see doctors eight or nine times for issues with spitting up and acid reflux, and that he had recently started eating solid foods — many of which were present at the breakfast table that morning.
He noted Jennings had no history of violence with Zavion or his mother and had watched the child by himself more than a dozen times.
Zavion’s 3-year-old cousin drew a picture of the baby with vomit on him two days after he died, and the blanket he was using that day was wet.
“Where’s the motive?” he asked. “What drives a man to do this evil ... sinister act, with no history of it?”
This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 3:01 PM.