Cleveland couple sentenced to 30 years in prison for newborn daughter’s death

Five years after the death of their newborn daughter, Zhavia Franklin, and one day into their joint trial in the 75th State District Courtroom of the Honorable Mark Morefield in the Liberty County Courthouse, the baby’s parents – Cassidy Shadae Jones, 36, and Kenneth Lee Franklin Jr., 25, both of Cleveland – admitted their guilt and each took 30-year plea deals on Tuesday, July 18.

By accepting the plea deals for Injury to a Child Causing Serious Bodily Injury, they are unable to appeal their sentences.

Franklin was represented by attorney Chad Etheridge while Jones was represented by attorney Dan Bradley.

District Attorney Jennifer Bergman told Bluebonnet News afterward that she believes the plea deals were a good resolution to the case as prosecutors had a limited amount of evidence as to which of the parents actually committed the offenses that led to the baby’s death, making the case harder to prove to a jury.

In the first day of the trial, the jury heard from retired Cleveland firefighter and paramedic Michael Bortz, who was first dispatched to the couple’s home at 714 Samuel Wiley Drive in Cleveland in April 2018, two weeks after Zhavia was born. The infant was suffering from respiratory distress and was transported by air ambulance to an area hospital.

“Was there anything about the parents’ behavior that seemed unusual or odd?” Assistant District Attorney Kevin Barnes asked Bortz.

“They were very distant,” Bortz replied.

When asked to describe their interactions, Bortz said he mostly interacted with Zhavia’s grandmother.

“She is the one who showed concern. I didn’t get a whole lot of interaction out of anyone but the grandmother,” he said.

On May 5, 2018, first responders were dispatched a second time to the home. When they arrived, they found a woman attempting to do CPR on Zhavia. Bortz described walking into a chaotic scene where a large group of people had gathered after learning of the infant’s medical distress.

“My first action was to get the child and make sure we were taking care of the child. I was having trouble distancing myself from the family. The lady initially trying to do CPR would rush over and try to perform CPR while I was doing ‘look, listen and feel’ to properly check the baby. She wasn’t breathing, had no pulse, so I began CPR,” he said.

Bortz told the court that he did everything he could to save the baby, and had to retire from fire service because the case haunts him.

“It keeps me awake at night,” he said.

During cross-examination, Bradley asked Bortz why he had used the word “attempting” instead of “performing” in reference to CPR that was being done on the child by the woman on the scene. Bortz said it was simply a choice of words that shared the same meaning in this case.

In discussing the child’s injuries, Bortz said the baby, on his final visit to the home, had a flat forehead that “didn’t look right.”

Etheridge asked Bortz if he had noticed any other obvious injuries to the child besides the flat forehead, but he couldn’t recall any.

The jury next heard from former Cleveland Police Officer Shakara Titus, who now works for Spring ISD Police Department. Titus was wearing a bodycam when she was dispatched to the home on May 5, 2018. After watching the bodycam video footage and brief testimony from Titus, the trial ended on Monday.

As there was an issue with the defense attorneys not receiving certain medical documents in time for experts to review, the trial was pushed back to resume at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. Both Bradley and Etheridge asked Judge Morefield for a mistrial, but their requests were denied.

When the trial resumed on Tuesday afternoon, it was announced that both Franklin and Jones had accepted the plea deals. Judge Morefield honored their requests to the plea deals and sentenced them both to 30 years in prison. Neither will be eligible for parole until they have served at least 15 years.

While the sentences were not as harsh as some might like, Bergman said that from a legal standpoint, it was a good resolution.

“There’s no resolution that we could ever reach, especially in a case like this, where we would say, ‘Yeah, I am okay with the resolution.’ We aren’t okay with the resolution because we can’t fix this situation for the baby,” said Bergman.

Autopsy reports were never discussed during the brief trial; however, Bergman and Barnes explained that the baby had extensive injuries. They had planned to use a baby doll and stickers to demonstrate the injuries to the jury.

When asked how many stickers would have been needed, Bergman said, “A lot. The doll would have been covered in stickers.”

The autopsy reports apparently would have shown that the baby had no food in her stomach or intestines, she weighed two pounds less than when she left the hospital after birth, and had at least 30 internal hemorrhages, 20 broken ribs and a ruptured spleen and liver. There were no signs of sexual assault.

Barnes said cases like this take a toll on prosecutors, who are never “satisfied” with the outcome despite the harshness of the sentences.

“Nothing about this case has felt good the entire time. It’s been a kick to the gut and hard to do,” he said. “The one thing I would really love to know is which parent beat the child. They are both responsible, but to this day, they’ve just sat there and said, ‘I know nothing. I saw nothing.'”

Jones’ two other children, ages 1 and 2 at the time, had no injuries and were removed from her care by Children’s Protective Services, Barnes said, adding that he believes the children are now in the care of a grandmother.

After the sentencing, Franklin’s attorney, Chad Etheridge, said he went along with the plea deal because both defendants wanted it.

“This is a very unfortunate situation and outcome. No matter what, there is the death of a baby. I believe it is possible that the jury would have come back and unfortunately rendered a much harsher sentence for my client. The punishment range in a case like this was 5-99 years. At least this way, both parties now have a chance to serve their time and make parole eventually,” Etheridge said. “They both have a significant amount of time to serve, and it will ultimately be up to the [parole] board if they are to be paroled.”