Griffin v. State

Following a jury trial, Lester Casey Griffin was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter based on misdemeanor battery as a lesser included offense of malice murder, felony murder, two counts of cruelty to children, aggravated battery, and aggravated assault.1 On appeal, Griffin contends that the resulting convictions must be reversed because the jury rendered inconsistent verdicts. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

1. In the light most favorable to the verdict, the record shows that, on June 28, 2009, two-year-old Dylan Helmey was at home with his younger half-brother, Jaiden, and Griffin, who was babysitting. Griffin was the live-in boyfriend of Dylan’s mother, who had left home at 11:00 a.m. At around 1:30 p.m., Officer Brion Hunt responded to a call that Dylan had stopped breathing. By the time Officer Hunt arrived, Dylan was dead. The next day, an autopsy was performed, and the medical examiner determined that Dylan sustained over one hundred injuries within two hours of his death. The most significant injury was a laceration to the right atrium of Dylan’s heart, caused by extreme force. When confronted with the autopsy results, Griffin admitted that he had gotten angry at Dylan and hit the child in the chest. Finally, he admitted that it was not the first time Dylan had been harmed while in his care.