Testimony begins in case against woman accused of killing 4-year-old

JONESBORO, Ill. -- Testifying Monday in Union County, Illinois, Circuit Court, Chris Hepburn recalled the last evening he spent with his 4-year-old son, Justin.

It was Dec. 9, 2011, and Hepburn was scheduled to go to Wisconsin on a business trip the next day. He spent the day with Justin, taking him to a doctor's appointment, playing outside with him and then reading to him in the evening.

"I'm not the most smart person, so I didn't say all the words right, but he never cared," Hepburn said.

The next morning, Hepburn dropped Justin off at a babysitter's house and left for Wisconsin.

It was the last time he saw the little boy alive.

A bench trial began Monday in the case against Hepburn's ex-girlfriend, Sacha Brown, 32, who is charged with murder, aggravated battery of a child younger than 13 and concealing a homicidal death.

In his opening arguments, Union County State's Attorney Tyler Edmonds portrayed Brown as a violent woman prone to angry outbursts and severe, sometimes abusive discipline.

Emergency workers responding to a 911 call the morning of Dec. 11, 2011, found Justin dead on the floor next to his bed in Brown's trailer in Ware, Illinois, his clothing and bedding covered in dishwashing liquid, Edmonds said.

"This dish soap was a panicked attempt to hide who really killed Justin," he said.

The boy died of a four-inch skull fracture as a result of having his head slammed against a flat surface, Edmonds said.

He accused Brown of killing Justin and trying to make it appear as if he died as a result of drinking dishwashing liquid.

No dishwashing liquid was found in the boy's mouth or stomach, and even if he had ingested some, "it would not have killed him, as the scene had been staged to suggest," Edmonds said.

He suggested Brown, exhausted from working a 15-hour shift at a mental-health facility, attacked the boy because he wouldn't settle down so she could sleep.

"While she was alone with Justin, tired, frustrated and due back at work in a few hours, she acted out violently," Edmonds said.

Brown's attorney, Larry Karraker, called the case against his client "smoke and mirrors" motivated by public pressure.

"The sheriff's office had to close this case. There was a great hue and cry for an arrest to be made," Karraker said in his opening arguments. "This was a case that required heavy investigation, but there was no heavy investigation in this case. It was a rush to judgment."

He challenged Edmonds' depiction of Brown, contending she loved Justin so much, she had his name tattooed on her wrist about a week before his death.

"The evidence will show that she had a loving, caring relationship with Justin," Karraker said. "He called her 'Mom.' They went places and did things. She took over the role of mom when his own mother didn't have much to do with him."

Karraker suggested the boy's injury could have been the result of an accident at a babysitter's home a few hours earlier.

Hepburn testified his relationship with Brown, which began in early 2010, started well, but the pair eventually clashed over parenting styles.

Hepburn said Brown used what he considered excessive punishment to discipline Justin for potty-training accidents -- hitting him, breaking his toys in front of him and even taping his hands to a cabinet once.

"If he [wet] his pants, he'd get, like, four to five licks that were absolutely horrifying. You could hear them," he said. "There'd be bruises on his butt."

Justin wasn't the only one who felt Brown's wrath, Hepburn said.

He described an altercation in early 2011 in which a "very intoxicated" Brown "flipped out" and attacked him with a steak knife, injuring his thumb, and a later instance in which she jumped into the back of his truck and smashed the back window with a hammer when he tried to leave her.

Edmonds asked Hepburn why he went back to Brown after that.

"Can I say because I'm an idiot? ... I stayed there because Justin did call her 'Mom,'" he said. "I wanted my son to have a whole family, and I let my love for her kids blind my better judgment of protecting my son."

On cross-examination, Karraker highlighted inconsistencies in Hepburn's story.

He asked why Hepburn didn't seek medical attention or call police after Brown attacked him with the knife.

Hepburn said he kept quiet and even lied to the Department of Children and Family Services at one point in an effort to protect Brown, who was trying to get custody of her daughters.

"You endangered your son in order to help her in a custody case," Karraker said. "Is that what you're saying?"

"If you want to look at it that way, yes, I did," Hepburn said.

Karraker pointed to a Jan. 12, 2012, interview with police in which Hepburn claimed he hadn't actually seen Brown tape the boy's hands to the cabinet and didn't believe it really happened.

He also noted Hepburn told police he had never seen Brown spank his son for wetting his pants.

Karraker questioned why Hepburn would keep lying to protect Brown a month after his son's death.

"When my son passed away, I kind of lost my little bit of sanity I had in my brain," Hepburn said.

Hepburn acknowledged he is not perfect: In 1999 or 2000, he said, he pleaded guilty to seven counts of burglary and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.

"I admitted to my faults, and the judge sentenced me to what he thought was fair," he told Edmonds.

Also testifying Monday were emergency medical technician Lance Meisenheimer and now-retired Union County deputy Jack Theriac, who responded to the 911 call, which Edmonds played in court.

Theriac testified he did not know the boy's death was a homicide at the time. He said he did not have training or experience in handling child-death cases and deferred to Union County Coroner Darryl Rendleman, who told him the death appeared to be accidental, but it "wouldn't hurt" if he took photographs at the scene.

Brown wept quietly as Edmonds showed Theriac's photographs on a large television monitor.

The trial got off to a later start than expected when Brown arrived more than 30 minutes after the scheduled 9 a.m. start time.

She apologized to Judge William Thurston, telling him she was confused because most of the previous hearings in her case had started at 10 a.m.

"It's a nonissue. Things just happen," he assured her.

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Definition

• Bench trial: A trial in which a judge, rather than a jury, hears the evidence and determines the defendant*'s guilt or innocence.