Hunt v. State

Danny Hunt was charged with two counts of cruelty to children based on allegations that he maliciously caused two-month-old Jordan Berry excessive physical pain by deliberately breaking her arm and by failing to seek medical attention for her afterward. In this appeal of his convictions, he challenges the sufficiency of the evidence.

Although Hunt is not Jordan’s father, he was engaged to marry her mother, Jillian Berry, and he lived with the mother and helped her care for the child. Shortly before Hunt and Berry were married, she noticed that her daughter was not using her left arm and that the arm was limp. When she asked Hunt if he knew why, he responded that Jordan had probably slept on it the wrong way. When Jordan began using the arm a day or two later, Berry thought nothing more of it. But after she and Hunt returned from their honeymoon, they attended a wedding shower where a nurse observed Jordan and commented that she thought her arm might be broken. Again, Berry asked Hunt how it might have happened, and he said he did not know.