Four defendants in a 2016 Pulaski County child abuse case have had their charges dismissed, due to what prosecutors are calling an administrative problem. On December 14, 2016, sheriff’s deputies reportedly found a three-year-old girl locked inside a plywood box in the living room of a home near Denham. Several adults in and around the home were taken into custody.
Donna Short, Christopher Short, and Patricia Meeks were all charged with felony neglect of a dependent. “Of those three defendants, one had died, one is coming to plead guilty, and the other one was to have pled guilty, but changed his mind and decided he wanted a trial, instead,” says Pulaski County Prosecutor Dan Murphy. “So those are set.”
Murphy says the issue had to do with the six people who were charged with failure to report child abuse. “They had been set for a bench trial in October of last year,” he explains. “One of the defendants made a written request for a jury trial, which they can do under the rules, and the court continued all of the cases until May 2, 3, and 4, I think it was, of this year.”
The problem, according to Murphy, was that the proper record wasn’t made. “There’s a rule that says a court can’t speak through an absent record,” he says. “If there’s no record of it, then it didn’t happen.”
Murphy says that last month, four of the defendants argued that without the record of the continuance, their right to be brought to trial within a year was violated. “We had a hearing on that, and the judge ruled that although everyone was aware of what was going on, the judge’s office had failed to make any entry in three of those cases,” Murphy explains. “There was one outlier a little bit, but in three of those cases, there was no entry showing that the case had ever been continued but no one showed up for the trial. And therefore, he granted the Criminal Rule 4 in those three and dismissed those three cases.”
Murphy says the fourth defendant’s case ended up being dismissed, as well. “The attorney at the time had filed a motion to continue, but the judge never ruled on it until long after the fact, and the court found that that also violated his rights, and therefore, that case was also dismissed.”
Of the remaining two people accused of failure to report child abuse, Tim Senesac is scheduled to go to a jury trial on November 26 and 27, according to court documents. Meanwhile, Derrick Butala was sentenced to 180 days in jail, after pleading guilty this week, according to Murphy.
Michael Meeks, Thelma Meeks, Shawn C. Griffin Jr., and Anna Senesac all had their charges dismissed. Pulaski County Sheriff Jeff Richwine tells WKVI News that he’s disappointed with the outcome.
