Kristen Meyer and Alejandro Aleman
Girl, 1, starves to death: State seeks death penalty vs. father
By Olivia Hitchcock
The Palm Beach Post
The State Attorney's Office is seeking the death penalty for Alejandro Aleman, the man charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of his 13-month-old daughter.
Aleman's defense attorney Michael Salnick, who was officially appointed as his counsel Tuesday morning, questioned the legality of the death penality, a hot topic in the Florida Supreme Court, as well.
Currently, a jury must be unanimous in its decision to sentence someone to death. However, judges across the state are delaying death sentences while courts debate its legality.
Salnick entered not guilty pleas for his client on the 1st-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and animal cruelty charges. He declined to talk to media about the case.
Aleman's daughter, Tayla, starved to death April 1, according to the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner. An autopsy revealed Tayla had E. coli, multiple strains of influenza and the start of pneumonia when she died.
Tayla's mother, Kristen Meyer-Aleman, also faces 1st-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges in her death. She told sheriff's deputies Tayla was fine 1 minute and stopped breathing the next.
Kristen Meyer-Aleman, mother of 10 with another on the way, couldn’t understand how her 13-month-old daughter was dead.
“One minute (Tayla) was fine,” her mother told a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy hours after it happened, “and she suddenly stopped breathing while in (my) arms.”
That supposedly healthy baby died April 1 with multiple strains of influenza, E. coli, the start of pneumonia and a bacteria known to cause skin infections found in her tiny, frail body, the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner determined. She weighed just over 7 pounds, two fewer than when she was born, according to its report.
Tayla’s official cause of death was ruled “inanition due to neglect.” Simply put, she died of exhaustion. And now her parents are facing first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges, and her siblings are in the state’s care.
According to sheriff’s office reports made public last week, a deputy could hardly believe Tayla’s little body was one of a 13-month-old. The skin hung off it, wrinkled, too loose for her tiny frame. She had sores, a severe diaper rash and a bruised left eye.
She didn’t have teeth.
Meyer-Aleman, then 42, admitted to deputies that night at Palms West Hospital that Tayla was a little underweight. One of her sons, then 2, was thin at Tayla’s age as well, but he grew to be “perfectly healthy in size,” she told deputies. In December, a pediatrician had assured her a little extra formula would do the trick for Tayla.
That was the last doctor reported to have seen Tayla before she died, sheriff’s office records show. Meyer-Aleman couldn’t remember the woman’s name.
The sheriff’s reports offer a timeline of what happened at the Alemans’ three-bedroom Loxahatchee homejust north of Lion Country Safari and at Palms West the night Tayla died.
Kristen Meyer-Aleman was at home with the 10 kids on the afternoon of April 1 when she fed Tayla about 9 ounces of a mixture of Similac formula and milk. Three or four hours later, she tried to feed Tayla another 8 or 9 ounces, she told deputies. But Tayla seemed full and she was afraid of overfeeding her, according to a report.
Her husband, 39-year-old Alejandro Aleman, called at exactly 6:24, like he did every evening, to ask about dinner. Tayla seemed lethargic, Meyer-Aleman remembered, but she assumed the baby was just sleepy.
Several minutes later, Tayla stopped breathing in Meyer-Aleman’s arms, she told deputies.
Meyer-Aleman called her husband, who instructed her to call 911. A dispatcher coached her through CPR. The older Aleman children were outside the house. They told deputies they heard their mother scream.
Rescue crews rushed Tayla seven miles southeast of her home to Palms West. She was in bad shape, deputies recalled, and she died before they made it to the hospital, although Palms West’s staff still tried to revive her, sheriff’s office records show.
Tayla’s parents left their 14-year-old son — their oldest child — at home and in charge of his eight younger siblings while they rushed to the hospital.
They found a deputy guarding their daughter’s hospital room.
Alejandro Aleman screamed, according to a deputy’s report. He berated hospital staff, furious that he was denied access to his daughter’s room. He snapped pictures of the staff and called a lawyer who told him not to speak to deputies, according to a sheriff’s office report.
His wife agreed to speak with deputies about their daughter’s fast and unexpected decline. Tayla hadn’t been sick or even under the weather, she told deputies.
She’d noticed Tayla had a “minor” diaper rash, but Meyer-Aleman blamed apple juice for the irritation and applied cream.
The oldest Aleman kids told deputies all the children once were as skinny as Tayla. But they had grown. Tayla hadn’t and, for whatever reason, stopped breathing, they explained to deputies.
Later that night, they were taken from their family.
Meyer-Aleman is represented by a public defender. The Office of Regional Counsel is representing Meyer-Aleman in an open civil case, so a representative from the office argued it would be a conflict of interest for the office to represent her husband on the murder charge. Judge Charles Burton reluctantly appointed a private defense attorney, at the tax payer's expense, to represent Aleman last month.
Salnick has handled several high-profile trials in Palm Beach County in recent years. He represented ex-Boynton Beach police officer Stephen Maiorino, who was acquitted of armed sexual battery, armed kidnapping and another charge linked to allegations that he raped a Wellington woman while on duty in 2014.
Salnick will be paid by the Judicial Administrative Commission at a rate determined by the court.
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