Jury begins deliberating in trial of man accused of killing girlfriend’s baby daughter

By Dave Toplikar

Published Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 | 9:32 a.m.

Updated Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 | 6:44 p.m.

After hearing several hours of closing arguments Thursday, a Clark County jury has begun deliberating in the child abuse murder trial of a Henderson man accused of killing his girlfriend’s 16-month-old daughter in 2010.

Jurors decided to break for the evening and return at 9:30 a.m. Friday to consider the evidence in the trial of Cody Geddings, 26, who has been accused in the death of Addison Weast on March 31, 2010, in his home in Henderson.

Geddings has been charged with murder and child abuse with substantial bodily harm in the girl's death. He has also been charged with a second felony count of child abuse for not calling 911 emergency care for the child.

In action Thursday morning, Judge Douglas Herndon gave jurors their instructions and then Deputy District Attorney Kristen Kramer went through the prosecution's case point by point with the jury.

Kramer said it wasn't a case of "whodunnit." She said they knew that Geddings was guilty of child abuse based on the child's injuries. Kramer said Geddings made up the story about an accident happening in the backyard. She said testimony from several physicians pointed to child abuse by violent shaking or slamming of the baby into something.

She urged jurors to find him guilty of first degree murder by child abuse and also guilty of a second felony count of child abuse by negligence for not calling 911.

Norman Reed, Geddings' public defender, told the jury that the state had no motive for child abuse and that the accident happened the way Geddings said it did. Reed said that Geddings did not call 911, but neither did the child's mother — she rushed home and took the toddler to the hospital herself.

The defense wrapped up its case on Wednesday, with the final witness being John Farley, a UNLV physics professor. Farley testified that he conducted tests using a crash dummy that was roughly the same size of the girl to simulate an accident that Geddings claimed happened in his backyard.

Farley testified that his tests showed that a blow to the head that eventually killed the girl could have been caused by what Geddings claimed happened — the defendant says he had placed a large oxygen tank used in acetylene welding on a wobbly chair in his backyard and the girl knocked it over and it landed on her.

Geddings, who gave that story to police in an interview on video that was shown to the jury, said the heavy tank hit her on the head and then came to rest with the bottom of the tank still on the chair and the top of the tank on the ground. Geddings told police he then “freaked out,” took the girl into the house and tried to cover up the accident.

He said tried to hide the accident was because he thought no one would believe him because he had a sentencing pending on a different child abuse case involving his own son.

Geddings initially told both his girlfriend, Jaime Higgons, the girl’s mother, and police that the toddler fell out of her crib, screamed and then went into seizures. He told police he didn’t call 911, but called the girl’s mother so she could take her daughter to the hospital.

Geddings, during an interview with police, stuck to that story for an hour and 27 minutes before telling detectives the story about the oxygen tank falling on the girl.

Detectives who went out to investigate the back yard took photos of the tank, which was then strapped to a dolly. They also took photos of the chair that Geddings claimed it was resting. However, they did not gather DNA evidence, nor check the ground to see if there were any indentations that would match up with Geddings story, nor try to do their own re-enactment.

The detectives indicated they didn’t think Geddings’ second story was true.

Prosecutors have put several physicians on the stand who said the girl’s injuries to her retina were telltale injuries that point to one cause — shaken baby syndrome. The physicians have said the injuries suggest the child was violently shaken or slammed against something.

However, one physician for the Clark County coroner’s office has said there was some dispute among physicians about retinal hemorrhaging being caused exclusively by violent shaking. He said that the cause could have been a blow to the head.

During cross examination on Wednesday by prosecutors, Farley, the UNLV professor, said that he conducted the experiments by tipping over the oxygen tank, which weighed 145 pounds, and letting it fall on the head of the crash dummy. The dummy was hooked up to a device that measured the velocity of the strike, which provided a number that he matched up with similar crash tests used by the auto industry to determine the severity of an injury.

In the 11 tests he did, the tank caused what he said would have been fatal blows in five instances. Jurors saw about a dozen videos of the tests on Wednesday afternoon, plus many photos taken during the testing, which was done with the help of Geddings' public defenders, Reed and Shana Bachman.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Staudaher pointed out in his questioning that Farley didn’t use the same chair in his test that Geddings claimed to have used. He also got Farley to admit that the tests he conducted did not exactly match up to the description that Geddings gave on the video as to how the accident happened.

However, Farley said he would not change his conclusions that the falling tank could have delivered the fatal blow to the girl. He said his tests, “still included fatal results.”