A Brewer man convicted of killing his 6-week-old son will not get a new trial.
In March 2023, a jury convicted Ronald Harding, 39, of manslaughter in the death of his son, Jaden Harding, by violently shaking the boy on Memorial Day 2021. The jury reached a guilty verdict after just more than an hour of deliberations.
He appealed the conviction to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court arguing there was not enough evidence to support a conviction. Harding also argued that the prosecutor committed an error by saying the state’s medical witness was correct and implying a defense expert was “cherry-picked” for testimony.
The justices affirmed Harding’s conviction in an opinion issued Tuesday.
Jaden was shaken with so much force that he suffered a devastating brain injury and died at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, the Penobscot County District Attorney’s Office said at the sentencing.
In the appeal, Harding argued there was insufficient evidence to support the manslaughter conviction. It is the jury’s role to evaluate the evidence during a trial. The justices reviewed the evidence and found the jury rationally found Harding was guilty of manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt, the opinion said.
During the closing arguments, the prosecutor’s office said the defense “hired an expert to say this was not inflicted trauma” and that it “wasn’t the job of these medical professionals to come in to court and give opinions supporting one side or the other, to search the internet and cherry[-]pick for information.”
Harding’s defense attorney objected to the statement at the time. It was improperly vouching for credibility of the state’s witnesses, while implying the defense bribed someone to commit perjury, his appeal argued.
After the objection, Harding’s lawyer asked for the jury to be instructed to ignore the statement, which the judge agreed to do, but the lawyer then withdrew the request. The lawyer never asked for a mistrial.
In the appeal, Harding’s lawyer argued a mistrial should be granted because of the statements. However, there is no reason for an appeal review, between the chance to instruct the jury to ignore the statements and the lack of a mistrial request during the trial, the opinion said.
On May 31, 2021, Kayla Hartley, Jaden’s mother and Harding’s then-girlfriend, left the infant with Harding while she bathed her older children in another room. Jaden was alert and happy before she left the infant with his father but was not responsive or breathing when she came back.
Harding was sentenced in September to 15 years in prison but will only serve 6.5 years. He is in the Maine State Prison, with an earliest release date of Jan. 9, 2029.
