No!
Ms Thornton’s acts caused visible marks on the children. The four children suffered “any injury … regardless of its gravity or duration” because the welts, screams, and eyewitness testimony showed that Ms. Thornton’s acts clearly created substantial pain.
State v. Thornton
2022 – Ohio – 3452
First District Appellate Court
Hamilton County, Ohio
September 30, 2022
Mr. Angelo Bart testified that his home is about 40 feet from Ms. Quinnetta Thornton’s. He heard “multiple kids, screaming pleading to stop. It sounded like they were getting hit.” Mr. Bart testified that it “seemed like the children were being hit and they were just yelling to stop.” While he initially thought that it was “a minor discipline,” he became concerned, so he accessed his security camera to hear better. He listened for about five minutes before deciding that the situation was “getting out of hand” because the “kids were pleading,” so he called 911. The police arrived about ten minutes later.
Seventeen minutes of Bart’s security footage was played during trial. Bart testified that the audio from the footage sounded like the children were being hit and Ms. Thornton repeatedly said, “turn around” and “I don’t want to hurt you.” A police officer witnessed screaming and Ms. Thornton hitting a child with a belt.
Cincinnati Police Officer Tim Pappas responded to the Thornton home, along with Officer Steve Bosse and Officer Michele Carter. Officer Pappas testified that they parked about 100 feet away from the Ms. Thornton home and, as they walked up the sidewalk, he heard “a lot of commotion” and what sounded “like a child screaming along with an adult” and that it “sounded fairly horrific … like such chaos.” A screened window and its blinds were open, which allowed Officer Pappas to see inside.
Officer Pappas testified that he heard what sounded like “a child was being severely beaten.” He could see Ms. Thornton but could not see the full body of who she was hitting. Officer Pappas determined that the child was being beaten after “ten or fifteen seconds” of hearing a child screaming and the belt snapping. Officer Pappas testified that after he saw Ms. Thornton hit the child with the belt, he “punched [his] hand through the screen and [he] tried to grab a hold of” Thornton, telling her to stop.
Officer Pappas’s body-worn camera (“BWC”) footage was played during trial. While the video did not show what Officer Pappas had seen due to the position of the camera on Officer Pappas’s chest, he could be heard on the video saying “put [the belt] down.” Officer Pappas testified that Ms. Thornton was using a belt to strike one of the children, who was naked, “cowering down,” and crying in a corner of the room.
Officer Pappas placed Ms. Thornton in custody. The officer discovered that three other children were also in the home, naked. 241-KIDS responded to the scene as the officers began to take pictures. Officer Pappas testified that the children were “visibly upset and several of them had welts about different parts of their body.” According to Officer Pappas, Ms. Thornton became “very belligerent and very out of control for a small amount of time,” which caused the responders to request that Ms. Thornton be removed from the home or they would take the children to another location to be examined. Police, EMT, and caseworker witness welts on the children.
Cincinnati Police Sergeant Jennifer Dawson testified that she took photographs of Thorton’s four children—all had injuries on their bodies. The ten-year- old child, M.S., had welts that were “red,” “fresh,” and four-to-six-inches long on various parts of her body. Eight-year-old M.S. had two welts on his left leg that were “fresh” and “red,” and a two-to-three-inch red mark on both his right knee and left arm. Five-year-old K.J. had a “fresh red” welt on her arm. And four-year-old Q.J. had multiple “red” and “swollen” welts over “pretty much the whole back thigh.”.
Cincinnati Police Officer Michele Carter testified that when she arrived, three of the children were naked. She spoke with the oldest child briefly. She saw welts on the bodies of the children. Ms. Thornton was “partially clothed.” Carter testified that Ms. Thornton told her that she was disciplining the children because they did not do as they were told. Officer Carter testified that the belt Ms. Thornton used to strike the children had “no actual buckle” but “a metal piece with a screw sticking out.”.
Jena Samelak, a firefighter emergency medical technician, responded to a call for domestic violence at the Ms. Thornton home. EMT/FF Samelak evaluated the children for injuries. She testified that the injuries on the oldest child looked worse in person than in the photographs because she remembered that the welts were raised. EMT/FF Samelak saw multiple welts on each child. She testified that K.J. had told her that Ms. Thornton had hurt her. She stated that the boy had the least amount of marks on him—he had two raised welts.
Joy Swing, a 241-KIDS caseworker, responded to the scene. Ms. Swing testified that the oldest child explained what had happened that evening and showed Ms. Swing her injuries, which Ms. Swing determined were caused by a belt. Ms. Swing testified that the photographs of the children did not depict the severity of the welts. Ms. Swing stated that the youngest child had the most injuries, having five to six welts.
Ms. Thornton testified in her own defense.
Ms. Thornton was a foster child who was abused as a child. Adults beat her and starved her for not following directions. Ms. Thornton testified that the difference between discipline and a beating is “like when we got a whooping, it was everyone got a whooping together like for not cleaning up or … being disrespectful. And the beatings was just because.” She further testified that a “whooping” is done with items like a belt, extension cords, or switches”. She said that her foster parents also used a piece of wood from a rocking chair, but never got into trouble for these methods. Ms. Thornton testified that she is a single mother of the four children, has no help from family, and the children have no father figure.
Ms. Thornton testified that she had instructed the children to clean up the house, which was hot because the air conditioning was not working. She stated that the children were not cleaning as they were told, so she began to yell and took away certain items, then she went back into her bedroom. She heard the two youngest fighting, so she came out of her room yelling and “probably was using profanity.” She realized that the living room couch was wet and there was water on the floor. The children were not cleaning up the “stuff” that was “everywhere,” so she said that everyone was “about to get a whooping.” Ms. Thornton testified that she does not usually resort to “whoopings.”.
Ms. Thornton testified that she got a belt and told the children to “drop their pants” because “that is how [she knows] how to give a whooping.” She stated that she had tried “time out” and taking items, but the children did not listen to her. Ms. Thornton testified that the oldest child was “doing too much” by grabbing a blanket and sitting in a corner. Ms. Thornton made the boy lay across the bed as she “whacked” his bottom, but every time she hit him with the belt, he moved or he would grab it, causing her to hit herself. Ms. Thornton stated that she intended to strike the children on their bottoms because that is how she gives “whoopings.” Ms. Thornton testified that the audio where the children were heard screaming was from the children “grabbing stuff, running around the room.”.
On cross-examination, Ms. Thornton reiterated that a “whooping” consists of being struck on the buttocks, and the marks found on the children’s bodies outside of their buttocks were caused by the children squirming during the “whooping” as she “never intended” to hit elsewhere. She stated that she did not hit the youngest child and if she was injured, it was because she was standing too close to where the other children were being struck. She testified that she did not tell the children to strip naked, but only to take off their bottoms. The girls, according to Ms. Thornton, were naked because they all were wearing dresses. Ms. Thornton conceded that she struck the children with the belt but reiterated that it was “[o]nly on their behinds though.”
Trial court judgment
The trial court found Ms. Thornton guilty on all four counts.
The court imposed a 180-day sentence on each count with credit for one day and suspended the remaining 179 days, and one-year of community control to be served to completion as the court wanted to be able to monitor Ms. Thornton.
Appeal
Ms. Thornton filed a timely appeal that her actions were Reasonable Parental Discipline.
Analysis
Reasonable parental discipline is an affirmative defense to a domestic – violence charge. O.R.C. §2901.05(D)(1)(b); State v. Faggs, 2020 – Ohio – 523. Ms. Thornton carried the burden to show that her use of physical discipline was reasonable under the circumstances. Faggs at ¶ 20-24; O.R.C. §2901.05(A).
Ms. Thornton never denied that she struck the children or that she used a belt to hit them. She admitted that she made them bare their buttocks before she struck them with the belt. The children’s screams and the belt snapping can clearly be heard on the audio played in court. Being that Officer Pappas’s BWC picked up the sounds of the children screaming and Ms. Thornton yelling from about 100 yards away, it is clear that the screams were related to pain, rather than an innocent explanation.
Mr. Bart, the neighbor, had become so concerned with the sounds of children screaming that he activated his security cameras to better hear what was going on. Mr. Bart heard the cries of children and what he determined to be the sound of the children being struck with something.
Officer Pappas observed the oldest child naked and “cowering” in a corner as her mother struck her with the belt. He was concerned enough that he punched through the screen to attempt to grab the belt or otherwise stop Ms. Thornton from striking her child again. Two witnesses, who were separated during their testimony, testified that the welts looked much worse in person than in the photographs. The testimony showed that the welts were fresh, red, and raised. All four of the children had visible welts on their bodies—the youngest child sustained the most injuries. Yet still, Ms. Thornton testified that she did not believe she did anything wrong.
Ms Thornton’s acts caused visible marks on the children. The four children suffered “any injury … regardless of its gravity or duration” because the welts, screams, and eyewitness testimony showed that Ms. Thornton’s acts clearly created substantial pain.
Conclusion
Ms. Thornton’s convictions were not against the manifest weight of the evidence.
Ms. Thornton did not meet her burden to prove the affirmative defense of reasonable parental discipline. Therefore, the trial court did not err in convicting Ms. Thornton on all four counts. The judgments of the trial court are affirmed.
Information for this article was obtained from State v. Thornton, 2022 – Ohio – 3452.
This case was issued by Ohio’s First District Appellate Court and is only binding in Hamilton County, Ohio.
Lessons Learned:
- What is and what is not considered ‘Reasonable Parental Discipline’? The Supreme Court of Ohio issued State v. Faggs, 2020 – Ohio – 523 and the court distinguished assault and parental discipline with this analysis; “Instead, to prove the crime of domestic violence, the state is only required to show that a defendant “knowingly cause[d] or attempt[ed] to cause physical harm to a family or household member.” We therefore conclude that proof of unreasonable parental discipline is not a component of the physical-harm element of R.C. 2919.25(A).”. This definition is mostly unhelpful when responding to a domestic violence call, however, by virtue of the holding in Faggs, the Supreme Court of Ohio provides law enforcement leeway in establishing probable cause for domestic violence.
- A significant takeaway for law enforcement is the following paragraph “Officer Pappas’s body-worn camera (“BWC”) footage was played during trial. While the video did not show what Officer Pappas had seen due to the position of the camera on Officer Pappas’s chest, he could be heard on the video saying “put [the belt] down.” Officer Pappas testified that Ms. Thornton was using a belt to strike one of the children, who was naked, “cowering down,” and crying in a corner of the room.”. This is but one of countless times that the officer’s eyes see more than the body worn camera. What is key is that the officer complete detailed documentation even if the event was captured on body camera.
- Angelo Bart should be highly commended for calling Cincinnati Police as his gut feeling was confirmed by the officers – that children were being beaten. Well done Mr. Bart!!
Does your agency train on Domestic Violence?
Contact me at https://www.objectivelyreasonable.com/contact/
Don’t fail your training.
Don’t let your training fail you!
Be safe, smart and Objectively Reasonable!