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REGIONAL: Fort Bragg man convicted of child's death
NORTH COAST, Calif. – A Mendocino County jury on Monday morning returned a guilty verdict against a Fort Bragg man accused last December of beating to death a 5-month-old baby girl.
Wilson L. “Josh” Tubbs III, 39, faces a state prison term of 25 years to life. He is scheduled to be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 13 by trial Judge John Behnke in Mendocino County Superior Court.
Tubbs was convicted of the death of infant Emerald Herriot by a jury that deliberated last than two full days, according to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office.
Tubbs showed no emotion Monday when the verdict was returned. Public Defender Linda Thompson, Tubbs’ attorney, patted him on the arm and said, “Hang in there.”
For Assistant District Attorney Paul Sequeira, the jury’s verdict Monday was a swift conclusion to a case that was prosecuted under state legislation specifically addressing deaths of children under eight years of age.
Sequeira said legislation enacted in the mid-1990s zeroed in on child abuse cases resulting in deaths.
“Before that they could be extremely difficult because prosecutors had to address issues of intent and implied malice associated with conventional murder cases,” said Sequeira.
Now, as in the Tubbs’ child-killing case, if prosecutors can prove that the physical abuse at the hands of the child’s caregiver led to great bodily injury and death, a conviction can result in the same sentencing standards as in conventional murder cases.
The Tubbs case is a near perfect example, said Sequeira.
Baby Emerald Herriot – a relative of the Tubbs family – had been in Tubbs and his family’s care for about a month when he brought her on Dec. 2 to the Mendocino Coast District Hospital. She was not breathing and had bruises all over her head and face.
According to the investigation, Tubbs claimed the baby had accidentally fallen from a changing table the night before. Tubbs testified in his own defense hat he delayed seeking medical care because the child didn’t appear seriously injured.
But earlier in a recorded interview with police investigators, Tubbs had said that the night before he slapped the side of the baby's head with an open palm and shook her so that her head twice whipped back and forth.
Tubbs’ taped admission came after he was told the fall he described couldn’t have resulted in two skull fractures, bruising all over the baby’s head and face and severe accumulation of blood between the skull and brain.
Tubbs took the witness during the trial to recant the story, contending that he lied to investigators because “I knew they were looking for a specific thing, and if they didn't get it from me that they were going to get it from somebody else, so I told them what they wanted.”