Maine’s highest court has upheld the conviction and sentencing of a Stockton Springs woman in the beating death of her 3-year-old son, one of several high profile cases that have brought ongoing scrutiny of the state’s child welfare system in recent years.
Jessica Williams, also known as Jessica Trefethen, was sentenced late in 2022 to 47 years in prison for the depraved indifference murder of her son, Maddox.
Maddox died on June 20, 2021 at Waldo County General Hospital in Belfast. He was brought there by his mother with complaints of stomach pain and couldn’t be revived after losing consciousness in the parking lot, according to testimony during Williams’ trial. An autopsy showed that he’d suffered a fracture in his lower spine, as well as bruises all over his body, bleeding in his brain, and numerous other injuries, according to police records.
Williams appealed her case in November of last year, challenging the admission of evidence related to previous abuse of Maddox months before his death, and testimony regarding her lack of communication with police officers, according to the court decision.
She also argued that there wasn’t enough direct evidence that she caused the injuries that killed Maddox. If none of those claims warranted a reversal on their own, Williams argued that their cumulative effect was to deny her due process rights.
But the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected those arguments in a decision published on Thursday, supporting the lower court’s admission of prior evidence as a demonstration of the relationship between Williams and her son.
“The State offered evidence of Williams’s having thrown Maddox onto a hard floor to illustrate her attitude toward him and her willingness to use violence against him, both of which were relevant to the identity and motive of the person who inflicted the injuries that caused Maddox’s death, as well as to the credibility of her explanation for the injuries,” the court wrote. “We have traditionally permitted the admission of evidence for such a purpose in cases of assault or abuse of a child.”
The court also allowed the lower court’s admission of evidence of Williams’s flight from police. While a defendant’s silence normally can’t be interpreted as evidence of guilt, actions such as “flight, hiding or resisting arrest” may be “admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt,” the court wrote.
Williams hid from the police for days after the death of her son, according to court documents.
The judges wrote that circumstantial evidence is not inferior evidence, and often must be relied on in cases of child abuse. Because Williams’ three other arguments failed, they also rejected her claim of cumulative loss of due process.
