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Thread: Alejandro Aleman Sentenced in 2016 FL Starvation Murder of 13-Month-Old Tayla Aleman

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    Alejandro Aleman Sentenced in 2016 FL Starvation Murder of 13-Month-Old Tayla Aleman


    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.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...SGvxkJuIMQMrJ/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    ER doctor called Fla. toddler's starvation death worst ever

    New information has been released in the death of a 13-month-old child from Loxahatchee.

    Tayla Aleman was found unresponsive in April. She weighed 7 pounds at the time of her death. Her parents, Alejandro Aleman and Kristen Meyer-Aleman, are both facing charges.

    "One minute she was fine and suddenly she just stopped breathing, while in her arms and now she is dead." That is what Meyer-Aleman told investigators the day her baby girl died, according to court records.

    The report shows Meyer-Aleman said her child was perfectly healthy.

    "She cannot understand what happened because everything occurred so fast," the report indicated.

    The emergency room doctor who tried to save the child said otherwise.

    According to the report, the physician said the child's condition was the worst case of starvation he has seen in his practice of medicine.

    The medical examiner ruled the child died from a lack of food and water, 2 pounds less than her birth weight.

    According to the report, the child's body appeared very frail and small. The body did not look like that of an average 1-year-old child.

    Tayla's parents face the death penalty after it was determined their child starved to death and suffered from a number of infections, including E. coli, staph and pneumonia.

    http://komonews.com/news/nation-worl...ath-worst-ever
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    Judge sets trial date for Palm Beach County parents charged in daughter's death

    Aleman and Meyer will go to trial in January 2018

    By Charles Keegan
    WPTV News

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A judge set a tentative date for the trial of two Palm Beach County parents accused of killing their daughter.

    In court Tuesday, Judge Charles Burton announced jury selection will begin on Jan. 11, 2018, with the trial to follow.

    Deputies arrested Alejandro Aleman and his wife Kristen Meyer last year. Investigators believe the couple starved their baby girl to death. According to records, their 1-year-old daughter weighed more when she was born than when she died.

    Both parents face one charge of first-degree murder. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty in the case.

    Aleman appeared in court Tuesday, but Meyer was absent. They each have separate defense lawyers. Both attorneys hinted they’d like separate trials.

    But prosecutors and the judge said they plan on combining the cases into one trial until they hear a formal argument from defense lawyers listing reasons for separating them.

    After Tuesday’s hearing, family members of Aleman grew emotional. One man, presumed to be Aleman’s father, shoved our photographer’s camera when our reporter attempted to ask him questions.

    http://www.wptv.com/news/region-c-pa...aughters-death
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Mother of little girl who starved: I didn’t realize how small she was

    By Lawrence Mower, John Pacenti and Olivia Hitchcock
    The Palm Beach Post

    The mother of a 13-month-old little girl who starved to death said she never noticed that her daughter had withered to the weight of a newborn.

    “I knew she was small. I didn’t realize she was that small,” Kristen Meyer-Aleman told detectives in a three-hour interview in September about her daughter Tayla’s April 2016 death. “Why would I starve my child?”

    The day of the interview, she and her husband, Alejandro, had been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and animal abuse. They face the death penalty.

    READ MORE: Complete coverage of Tayla Aleman’s death


    Tayla died of exhaustion caused by neglect and weighed 7 pounds at death, 2 pounds less than when she was born, the medical examiner said. Detectives told her mother she “looked like a concentration camp survivor.”

    In an interrogation recorded on tapes released by the State Attorney’s Office Thursday, Meyer-Aleman argued and interrupted detectives. When confronted with the piles of clothes found in her Loxahatchee home, several feet high and reeking of urine and feces, she said the landlord hadn’t provided a working washer and dryer yet she also said she did laundry every day.

    She said the dogs and her other children could be the reason the walls were spread with feces.

    INTERACTIVE: Walk through the Alemans’ home


    And she didn’t believe detectives when they told her Tayla had a severe rash around her genitals – so red it resembled burns — seen at Palms West Hospital where the child died.

    “It didn’t look that way when she went to the hospital,” Meyer-Aleman said.

    Tayla’s rash was only about the size of a quarter, she told them, and was caused by her daughter drinking apple juice.

    Her husband, Alejandro, on the other hand, said he never once picked up his 13-month-old daughter.

    Nor had he ever cradled any of the other nine children born before Tayla when they were babies.

    “I won’t hold a baby until, until like 2 years old,” Aleman said. “I don’t do little kids. I don’t,” adding that he was “scared” of them.

    During the interviews, he got frustrated, even annoyed, when detectives asked him why Tayla was so thin.

    “Aggravated child abuse and murder of my daughter, wow,” Aleman said. “That’s a nasty charge, a really nasty charge.”

    Tayla’s 10 siblings — one of whom was born after she died — have been under the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families since her death.

    In the recordings, both parents adamantly denied having anything to do with Tayla’s death, and neither said they noticed that she was abnormally thin.

    “I don’t really know how you pay attention to that,” Aleman told Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Detective Vionide St. Jean.

    “She was small. In my mind, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” Meyer-Aleman said.

    Detectives grew increasingly frustrated with Aleman, who said that after Tayla died, he read that she might have had a disease.

    “There’s a disease or something where a baby eats all the time but doesn’t put on weight,” he said.

    “Tayla did not have a disease,” an exasperated St. Jean said. “There was no disease. It was starving.”

    An autopsy revealed Tayla was suffering from multiple strains of influenza, E. coli, the start of pneumonia and a bacteria known to cause skin infections.

    Aleman insisted his daughter was fed and was baffled why detectives pressed him about taking not taking Tayla to see a doctor.

    “Is there a law that your baby has to go to the doctor?” Aleman asks.

    “Yes,” a detective responds. “It’s called medical treatment.”

    When deputies visited their three-bedroom Loxahatchee home, they could smell urine from the end of the driveway. Inside, there was no food, and the carpets were black, stained and reeking. Feces was on the wall, and one of the dogs had been kept in a cage for two months.

    The older kids pestered their parents about Tayla being “different,” Aleman said. “Everything about her was different, she was never like the rest of the kids,” Aleman said.

    But his wife said they never treated her any differently.

    “We all loved her,” she told detectives. “I treat all my kids the same way. I wasn’t different with any of my children, and then all this happened and threw my family into a turmoil.”

    Meyer-Aleman said her daughter’s death has broken her heart.

    “I don’t think anybody understands what it has done to me,” she said. “It has killed me inside.”

    But Detective St. Jean said she really didn’t understand.

    “I don’t think you are an animal and I don’t think you are a monster, but only an animal and a monster would sit there and let their child shrivel up and die like that.”

    Hear the parents’ interviews online

    Go to http://pbpo.st/alemantapes

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...AEcLWog0nrrAO/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Before his child allegedly starved to death, Alejandro Aleman purchased what is described by sheriff’s investigators as a “huge show truck



    EXCLUSIVE: How did baby Tayla Aleman starve to death?


    By John Pacenti and Olivia Hitchcock
    The Palm Beach Post

    LOXAHATCHEE — With 10 children, the Aleman family couldn’t be missed on the little Loxahatchee block, nestled among the slash and Australian pines.

    Dirty, shoeless and hungry, many of the children, ages 2-15, played outside almost daily, no adult around, when others their age were either in school or at daycare. Sometimes they banged on the door of their home, but no one would let them in.

    Neighbors described to sheriff’s investigators a near-feral clan of children during the Alemans’ stay at the rental property. The kids rummaged through the neighbors’ trash. They could be heard at 3 a.m. Some of the younger boys communicated only through “grunting sounds.”

    All are now in state custody. Their parents, Alejandro and Kristen Meyer-Aleman, are expected to be in court as soon as this week, fighting to keep their parental rights.

    When they do, they’ll be in shackles. The couple face first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges in the April 2016 starvation death of the littlest one — their 13-month daughter, Tayla.

    Tayla weighed 7 pounds at death, 9 pounds at birth. On the gurney at the emergency room, she wore a pink onesie made for a 3-month-old.

    Instead of a pudgy toddler, Tayla looked gaunt, old. Her skin was loose and wrinkled. The hair on her tiny head was thinning and falling out, but her body was covered in hair — which can be a telltale sign of starvation, nutrition experts say, when the body reacts to the feeling of cold caused by lack of nutrition.

    The baby couldn’t crawl. She had no teeth. Her tiny body was wracked with influenza, Streptococcus, e. Coli, pneumonia — found in the baby’s blood and in her lungs, detectives told her mother. She was severely dehydrated. Tayla was covered with raw sores and a rash on her genitals that was so red it resembled a burn.

    She died of exhaustion from lack of nutrition as a result of neglect.

    The parents face the death penalty in a trial slated for January.

    Food stamps, $40,000 truck


    Sheriff’s detectives were stunned when they didn’t get answers from the Alemans during separate interviews after their arrest in September, where both defended but contradicted one another.

    Alejandro Aleman was terse, giving detectives little information, saying he didn’t even pick up the child or bathe her. “I didn’t pay attention to that,” he said.

    In a three-hour interrogation, Tayla’s mother was combative, insisting that she fed her child regularly. She disputed the report that her child had a severe rash or that her baby was even sick.

    Meyer-Aleman told detectives her heart is broken by Tayla’s death, but repeatedly blamed the condition of her feces-laden home on the landlord, the plumbing, the dogs, even the kids.

    “Excuse me, you have more excuses than someone writing a bad check,” Detective William Vaughan told Meyer-Aleman.

    “You need to give your daughter some dignity. You need to take responsibility for what you did for your daughter,” Vaughan said.

    The detectives repeatedly asked the mother how the household could get so out of control, how a child could starve to death. Was she overwhelmed?

    Could little Tayla be a victim of poverty? Could the Alemans simply not afford to feed their children?

    The Alemans received $1,000 a month in food stamps. But Alejandro Aleman bought a “huge show truck,” a 2007 Ford Super Duty F-250 valued at $40,000, in October 2015, according to a Palm Beach County sheriff’s report. He told a neighbor that the extravagant purchase was going to anger his wife: “She’s going to kill me because I spent what we had in the savings account.”

    And the father kept himself fed as the neighbors knew he frequented a Cuban sandwich shop.

    4 DCF complaints


    Meyer-Aleman, though, reacted as any mother would when Tayla stopped breathing on April 1, 2016. Her 12-year-old son said he was in the front yard when he heard her scream. “They all ran inside where he said he saw his mommy crying and calling 911,” according to a sheriff’s report.

    Also, tucked away in voluminous sheriff reports is a statement from the landlord of the Loxahatchee house.

    Victor Hijuelos told investigators that while cleaning up his wrecked rental property after the Alemans’ arrest, he found burned spoons and syringe needles. The Alemans deny drug use. “I don’t even smoke cigarettes,” Meyer-Aleman said.

    Since the couple’s arrest, the Alemans’ family and friends have remained closed-mouthed. The coupled migrated from the Chicago suburb of Naperville. They were vagabonds in Florida, evicted from homes in St. Lucie and Orange counties and Royal Palm Beach before landing in a distant section of Loxahatchee just north of Lion Country Safari.

    DCF followed in pursuit — four investigations — but the results were another dead child.

    After the Alemans’ arrest
    , a DCF staffer involved in the case ended up arrested herself after police said she left her young children in a car and unsupervised while she ran inside a drug store.

    The first DCF contact with the Alemans was in September 2013 at a location redacted in DCF records. The next contact was in January 2015 in Orange County. Both complaints were for “inadequate supervision.” The third report in May 2015 found the family in Martin County, where a neighbor reported, among other things, one of the children playing with a machete.

    The Alemans contended the children were home-schooled but a regular source of complaints to the agency was from neighbors who worried the children were not in class. One of the children told sheriff investigators his mother taught him lessons from an electronic tablet.

    The last time DCF investigated before Tayla’s death, in October 2015, court documents show the agency was easily outmaneuvered by Alejandro Aleman — a repo man with a temper so nasty his own parents tried to take out a restraining order against him. One neighbor said she confronted him once about the children throwing rocks and told sheriff’s investigators that Aleman was so belligerent she stayed away from him after that.

    His mother, Josefina Aleman, wrote in a petition for protection from domestic violence that her son was so abusive she was afraid to go to her home in Greenacres. Alejandro and family moved there in June 2015, saying they needed a place to live for a few days. In early July, his parents went to court to evict them. The complaint was voluntarily dismissed by the parents.

    She said in the domestic violence petition that her son “threatened to kill my husband and me. We want to report him to child protection but he says he will hurt us. He doesn’t take care of our children. He refused to leave our home.”

    Alejandro Aleman told the court in a neatly hand-written letter, “no one ever threatened bodily harm to anyone” and that it was a matter that should be left up to the extended family to resolve.

    Closed hearing

    What happened inside the ranch-style home in Loxahatchee — as well as DCF’s role in letting it fester — likely will be revealed in the parental rights hearing in front of Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Daliah Weiss.

    But the public and the media are prohibited from attending, according to court administration.

    “They certainly don’t want to lose their children,” said Michael Salnick, the attorney for Alejandro Aleman in the criminal case only. “I would hope that this is ultimately not a death penalty case given many things I have learned.”

    Seeking the ultimate penalty is often a means to an end for the prosecution, said Stephen K. Harper, a former Miami-Dade assistant public defender who has handled death penalty cases.

    “Threatening somebody with the possibility of execution is an often-used technique to get a plea or a person to flip,” said Harper, now a visiting law professor at Florida International University.

    Dr. Nancy Kellogg, professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas, co-authored a study in 2005 about children who’ve been starved at home ranging in age from 2 months to 13 years old. She declined to be interviewed for this story, but spoke to The Seattle Times.

    “This is one of the worst forms of child abuse we see,” Kellogg said. “The physical and emotional agony a child goes through is very severe and long-lasting.”

    She said children who are starved, at least the ones who live, are worse off than prisoners of war because they are singled out from the family and are “brainwashed” into believing they did something to deserve punishment.

    So what would motivate a parent to the depraved act of starving their own child?

    Kellogg found one case in her studies in which a woman refused to feed her 8-year-old stepdaughter because the woman was jealous of her husband’s former wife. In another case, a 4-year-old boy was starved to death by his grandmother because he reminded her of her son.

    ‘Going-to-church family’


    Daniel Ingram leased his home to the Alemans in Royal Palm Beach and filed for eviction within three months. He said they came off at first as a “going-to-church family” but learned it was “a front, an act” and left the home “filthy.”

    “The neighbors wanted me to evict them sooner,” he said. “I realized real quick what they were. I was afraid that I was renting to monsters.”

    Alejandro Aleman rebuffed DCF, refusing to allow a state child protective investigator, responding to a complaint, inside the Loxahatchee house in October 2015 and demanding to see a supervisor. The investigator was responding to a complaint that the children were not clean, the landlord suspected drug use and that “the father had a gun without a permit and got a DUI but it is unknown if he still has his gun,” according to court documents.

    The investigator came back almost a week later with a sheriff’s deputy and the father again refused to let them see the children or go in the house. “Mr. Aleman was upset and he told her he was tired of people calling DCF on him and he wanted her to obtain a warrant in order to give her access to the home,” the DCF staffer told deputies, according to the offense report.

    Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection, said DCF workers have tremendous amounts of power and discretion to enter the house if they suspect child abuse. “Why these particular DCF workers were intimidated I don’t know,” he said.

    Armed with a motion to compel from a local judge, DCF returned to the Aleman home for the third time and found the children and the house clean, according to the sheriff’s report. All the beds were made. One of the older boys sat on a bed with an open book as if he was reading. After Tayla’s death, neighbors told deputies that many of the children couldn’t even write their name.

    During the DCF visit, Meyer-Aleman was dutifully changing Tayla’s diaper and there was food in the refrigerator. Alejandro Aleman stuck with the workers during the visit, moving them quickly through the home and at one time refusing to open a locked door, according to a DCF report.

    DCF noted the mother did not appear to be in fear. “She was confident in her answers,” the report reads. She told neighbors she helped run her husband’s roofing and pressure cleaning businesses. Alejandro Aleman said he also worked repossessing vehicles.

    DCF suspected the house had been cleaned in expectation for the visit. Wexler said evidently the Alemans from their previous interaction with DCF learned the agency’s penchant for seizing on messy homes.

    “There is not a field I know where the phrase, ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ is taken more literally and does more damage,” Wexler said.

    Alejandro Aleman “may have just had an instinct that by making everything neat and clean that it would ward off suspicion, which apparently it did.”

    When DCF investigators interviewed the children, they discovered not all of them were verbal, instead making “grunting noises and weird sounds” to their questions.

    “Even the movements or gestures the children would make in an attempt to answer their questions did not make sense,” the investigator recalled in the offense report. Still, DCF closed the case.

    Kristen Meyer-Aleman didn’t find anything wrong with her children’s speech, the sheriff report states. She told them she is from Chicago and speaks fast and that her children would grow out of their speech difficulties.

    Her husband dismissed detectives’ concerns. “Oh those kids speak fine,” he said.

    “Sir, those children could not even say their names,” a detective countered. “What color are you wearing? Your son’s response was ‘uh.’ He couldn’t even speak.”

    House of filth

    The condition of the Aleman household was very different from DCF’s visit after Tayla was pronounced dead at Palms West Hospital.

    The description of the Aleman home at 17148 30th Lane North surprised even the most hardened sheriff detective.

    “There were flies, gnats and what appeared to may have been fleas swarming the house,” the sheriff’s report states. “There were piles of clothing located on the floor entrance of the foyer. The living room walls had what appeared to be feces smeared on them,” one investigator wrote.

    There were no working toilets. Urine-soaked, mildewed clothes were piled so high, investigators had trouble opening doors. The stench of urine and feces was so powerful it could be smelled from their driveway.

    The children were discovered lethargic on couches, lying under piles of clothing. “All that could be seen were the bottom of their little feet,” one detective noted.

    Other investigators noticed the children were covered in bug bites and were very hard to wake up, “as if they were completely exhausted.”

    An American bulldog named Achilles was emaciated in a rusted cage filled with the animal’s feces, his fur so matted it couldn’t be cleaned.

    Animal Care and Control said Achilles — his hips and ribs clearly visible — had been confined in the cage for two months and was “terrified of almost every person that walked toward him.”
    11th child born — a healthy boy

    Still, the Alemans called 911 when their daughter became unresponsive. Kristen Meyer-Aleman couldn’t perform CPR as instructed by the 911 operator, telling investigators later she was worried she would hurt her frail daughter. She said her daughter was a “perfectly healthy baby” until she became unresponsive.

    Kristen Meyer-Aleman also refused to get into the ambulance with her dead or dying daughter for travel to the hospital, insisting that she wait for her husband, the sheriff’s report said. They drove to the hospital together and left the other children home with the oldest teen.

    At the hospital, the mother spoke to investigators, saying she knew her daughter was underweight but so were all her children when they were babies. She said Tayla drank at least 8 ounces of formula every three or four hours daily.

    Meyer-Aleman said she took Tayla in December 2015 to a pediatrician in St. Lucie County. The doctor, she said, told her to give her baby extra formula to put on weight. However, investigators found no evidence the baby was ever seen by the pediatrician.

    The mother is represented by the Public Defender’s Office, which did not return a phone call for comment.

    Five years older than her husband, Meyer-Aleman graduated with a business degree from Northern Illinois University and married Aleman 22 years ago. Her first son was born 15 years ago in Illinois before the family moved to Florida.

    It wasn’t until after Tayla’s death that authorities learned that Meyer-Aleman was pregnant again. She gave birth to a healthy boy before her arrest in September, her 11th child.

    By all indications, there was seldom a time that she was not pregnant. All of her children’s names started with the letter “T” and were ages 15, 13, 11, 8, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2 at the time of Tayla’s death.

    The scene at the hospital was chaotic. Alejandro Aleman screamed at hospital staff and took pictures of them when they wouldn’t allow the parents into the room where doctors were trying to revive Tayla.

    In the hospital’s bereavement room, he put his attorney on speaker phone when detectives tried to talk to him but didn’t ask the lawyer to speak for his wife.

    He contacted his neighbor, Luke Bush, telling him a parasite had killed Tayla and bemoaning the police inquiry, the sheriff report stated. “This is why people throw their babies in Dumpsters because they harass you like this when accidents happen,” Bush said the father told him.

    Bush also said Aleman told him to let him know if anybody tried to get into his home, yelling that he was going to sue the sheriff’s office, according to the report. “Just make sure none of the kids go out and nobody goes inside,” Aleman said.

    The popcorn diet

    Bush and his wife, Deanna, had hosted the Alemans for drinks one night and reported to deputies that Meyer-Aleman said she didn’t cook and was eating only popcorn to lose weight. “Mrs. Bush stated she asked Mrs. Aleman what did the kids eat and she never gave an answer,” according to the sheriff’s report.

    The Bushes sometimes observed the children eating potato chips or “a piece of frozen pizza” outside the home. The two older Aleman boys would come over to their home to play with their eldest son. They would ask repeatedly for food.

    The couple told sheriff detectives that they wondered why they never saw anybody ever bringing groceries into the Alemans’ home and that they often saw the children outside unsupervised. The children appeared locked out of the house.

    During their interrogation, both parents denied anything was wrong before Tayla simply stopped breathing.

    “I knew she was small. I didn’t realize she was that small. She was eating good,” Meyer-Aleman said. “She acted normal cooed and smiled. The night before all this happened my husband came home from work and was playing with her and she was fine.

    There was no sign anything was wrong.”

    Her husband saw himself as the victim.

    “I know that nothing happened to my daughter at that house besides passing away and not knowing why. It sucked. It really sucks real bad and … now I’m being accused of something.”

    Hear the parents’ interviews online

    Go to pbpo.st/alemantapes

    Other starvation cases

    While rare, intentional starvation of a child by a parent or caregiver happens elsewhere:

    Des Moines, Iowa: Nicole and Joseph Finn are facing first-degree murder charges in the October starvation death of their adoptive 16-year-old daughter, Natalie. She was found naked on the floor of her completely empty bedroom in a diaper. The couple’s children were the subject of numerous reports of child abuse for years by school officials and others.

    Dallas: A mother was sentenced to life in prison in April for starving her 7½-month-old baby boy to death. A judge could not get an answer from Princess White and her family as to why they deprived the child of food. The baby was too weak to cry when he died.

    Fontanet, Ind.: Four people were charged in February with neglect of Cameron Hoopingarner, a 9-year-old blind boy with cerebral palsy who starved to death. He weighed less than 10 pounds.

    Golden, Colo.: Jason and Katie Barton were sentenced in December to 12 years for starving their adoptive 6-year-old, who weighed 25 pounds when brought to a hospital. The couple put padlocks on the refrigerator, the freezer and pantry. The mother would taunt the girl by drinking her favorite chocolate milk in front of her.

    http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/...RUCEJEIiIBw9M/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #6
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    Starvation death: Baby Tayla Aleman had 90-degree temp at hospital

    By Holly Baltz
    The Palm Beach Post

    The first time 13-month-old Tayla Aleman saw a doctor since her birth was in the emergency room of Palms West Hospital when she arrived by ambulance with a body temperature of just 90.4 degrees.

    She couldn’t breathe on her own and had no heartbeat.

    Hospital workers tried to resuscitate her, but she was cold to the touch. After 10 minutes, she was pronounced dead.

    The story behind the story: How Tayla starved to death


    Her parents Alejandro and Kristen-Meyer Aleman stand accused of starving Tayla to death — both charged with first-degree murder and facing the death penalty.

    New court documents
    obtained by The Palm Beach Post give more insight into the scene in the ER that night and how her parents explained why their youngest child came to the hospital weighing just 7 pounds — 2 pounds less than when she was born.

    Tayla died in April 2016 looking like an old person. Her skin, wrinkled, hung loosely on her tiny body. The ER pediatrician, Dr. Jaime Estrada, told detectives that Tayla had “extreme emaciation, sunken eyes, sunken cheeks,” no fat on her buttocks and frail hair.

    But her parents apparently hadn’t noticed while she was alive.

    Her father told police during interrogation that he had seen pictures of Tayla after she died and “it bothered him how thin she was.”

    “I knew she was small. I didn’t realize she was that small,” Meyer-Aleman told police.

    Her mother was adamant that she did not starve her child and it hurt her that others think she is a “bad mother.”

    Meyer-Aleman told paramedics she’d been feeding Tayla a bottle of formula when the baby stopped breathing.

    And she later told police that she fed Tayla 8 to 9 ounces of formula every three to four hours. An investigator retorted that Tayla would have been overweight if that had been the case.

    READ MORE: The Post’s extensive coverage of the case


    The Florida Department of Children and Families investigated four times after complaints that the Alemans’ 10 children were unsupervised and neglected. Workers said Tayla had looked a little thin but nothing to be concerned about.

    In addition to the shocking descriptions of the baby, the place where it all happened — the Alemans’ Loxahatchee home — surprised even the most hardened sheriff’s detectives.

    Accompanying the latest court and police reports were videos showing what deputies saw as they walked through the home.

    Insects swarmed decaying food and fecal matter all over the house. A dog huddled in a cage with half-inch-deep matted feces underneath him. A stainless steel fridge stood dirty but empty. Another fridge had curdled milk and frozen french fries but not much else. Piles of clothes were everywhere, including a stack 5 feet high and smeared with feces taking up most of the laundry room.

    Yet amid the chaos, a few things seemed out of place. The master bed was neatly made and the stove was shiny and clean.

    http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/...okVAgiW9WvXcL/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Alejandro Aleman is facing the death penalty in his first-degree murder trial.

    The man accused of starving his baby girl to death will keep his court-appointed lawyer in his death-penalty case, according to a Palm Beach County judge’s order.

    Circuit Judge Joseph Marx ruled that Michael Salnick can continue as Alejandro Aleman’s lawyer after Salnick disclosed he had represented two prosecution witnesses in separate criminal proceedings.

    Over the course of two separate court hearings and a written motion, Salnick and Assistant State Attorney Jill Richstone had gone back and forth over what it would mean if the case went forward as is.

    In his motion, Marx said Aleman was adamant about keeping Salnick as his lawyer and that, “It is abundantly clear that (Aleman) has been fully informed about any potential conflicts.”

    ″(Aleman) presents as intelligent, well informed and an active participant in his defense,” Marx wrote.

    Aleman, along with his wife Kristen Meyer Aleman, were arrested in 2016 on charges of first-degree murder in the death of their 13-month-old daughter, Tayla. Authorities said the girl died from starvation. Both parents face the death penalty. Aleman’s wife is represented by Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow, according to court records.

    In both hearings, Richstone said Salnick previously represented a key witness, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Captain Andrew Giamberini. Richstone said Giamberini was the first one on the scene to come in contact with the lifeless Tayla in Meyer-Aleman’s arms.

    Giamberini was arrested in 2016 after investigators said he kneed a handcuffed man several times. The incident also was recorded on dashboard-camera video, according to the arrest report. Giamberini pleaded guilty to the battery charge and served nearly three months on house arrest, according to court documents.

    In his motion, Salnick said Giamberini’s conviction would not “be admissible in any cross-examination.”

    The other witness Salnick previously represented, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy Alvin Herman, was part of the PBSO warrant unit that helped to arrest Aleman, whose family lived in Loxahatchee. Salnick wrote in his motion that Herman did not interview Aleman or have anything further to do with the investigation. Herman was arrested on DUI charges in March 2018 and plead guilty to reckless driving and received a year of probation, according to court records.

    In court, Salnick said the conflict must be actual, not perceived. He had Giamberini and Herman sign affidavits saying they understood what was happening and waived any potential conflicts.

    Salnick also cited case law that says a defendant has the fundamental right to a conflict-free counsel, but that it can be waived if it’s written in “clear, unequivocal, and unambiguous language.”

    Aleman, who also signed a waiver saying he understood the circumstances, spoke during both court hearings and said he’s been working for nearly two years with Salnick and doesn’t want to stop.

    “I’d like to get this to trial and get this over with,” he said in October.

    Marx and Richstone agreed that the question was more complicated because this is a first-degree murder trial and the prosecution is seeking the death penalty. She said it comes down to what Aleman’s options will be if he’s sitting on death row down the line.

    “Assume he gets the death penalty. His appellate lawyer is going to be the one that tells him, ‘No, you have an issue,’ ” she said about potential conflicts that may arise to an appeal.

    Aleman’s next hearing is scheduled for January, according to court records.

    https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/2...to-keep-lawyer
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Edited:

    Death-penalty trial date set for Loxahatchee mother in starved infant case


    By Hannah Winston
    Palm Beach Post

    Kristin Meyer will go on trial before her husband, Alejandro Aleman, in the death of their 13-month-old, Tayla, in April 2016.

    The mother accused of starving her baby girl with her husband is set to start her death-penalty trial in September before a different judge, court records show.

    Kristen Meyer, 45, is scheduled to appear before Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo on Sept. 20 to begin jury selection in her first-degree murder trial. According to the order signed by Circuit Judge Joseph Marx, three weeks have been reserved for the trial and the possible penalty phase if Meyer is found guilty of killing her daughter, Tayla Aleman.

    Meyer and her husband, Alejandro Aleman, are accused of starving Tayla, the youngest of the couple's 10 children at the time of her death on April 1, 2016. When she died, the 13-month-old weighed 7 pounds. Investigators said that was 2 fewer pounds than when she was born. An emergency-room doctor called Tayla’s starvation death the worst he had ever seen.

    Originally, the parents were set to be tried together before Marx, but Meyer’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow, and Aleman’s appointed attorney, Michael Salnick, agreed to sever the cases during a hearing June 28.

    Though Meyer’s case has been added to Caracuzzo’s docket, Aleman’s case will remain before Marx, adding to a growing list of high-profile trials he’s handled this year.

    Aleman will be back in court Oct. 28, when a possible trial date will be set.

    https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/2...ed-infant-case
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #9
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    Edited/Related:

    Mom to use insanity defense in infant starvation trial

    By Hannah Winston
    Palm Beach Post

    WEST PALM BEACH - The defense for Kristen Meyer intends to use the insanity defense in her death-penalty trial, according to court documents released this week.

    Kristen Meyer and her husband, Alejandro Aleman, are charged with first-degree murder in the April 1, 2016, death of their daughter, Tayla Aleman.

    In a court document released Monday, Meyer’s attorneys wrote the 45-year-old suffers from bipolar disorder and “she did not know what she did was wrong or the consequences of her actions or inactions.”

    In addition, the lawyers are asking the judge to reschedule the September trial because, among several other reasons, their expert witness is not available to testify.

    The lawyers will meet with the judge Aug. 13 to ask for a continuance.

    Meyer’s defense team wrote that since they filed their intent to rely on the insanity defense, they anticipate prosecutors will need more time to have their own expert examine Meyer before the September trial date. In addition, new pieces of evidence have continued to come in through the summer.

    Alejandro Aleman, is scheduled to appear before Circuit Judge Joseph Marx on Oct. 28 when a possible trial date may be set.

    https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/2...arvation-trial
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #10
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    She was 7 pounds and starved to death. Her neglectful parents should be executed, prosecutors say

    By Marc Freeman
    Sun Sentinel


    Tayla Aleman’s parents insisted she’d been eating. The girl’s autopsy told an entirely different story.

    Here was a 13-month-old who weighed only 7 pounds when she died — about 2 pounds less than she did at birth.


    On top of this “extreme developmental delay,” Tayla also had the flu, pneumonia and several serious infections before she stopped breathing inside a rural Palm Beach County home.


    The hospital emergency room doctor called it the worst case of starvation he'd ever seen. And the medical examiner said Tayla’s death on April 1, 2016, was a homicide.


    Investigators discovered the toddler had lived in a filthy, smelly, bug-infested house with hardly any food for the family’s 10 children and a caged dog.


    Prosecutors say Tayla, emaciated and unable to crawl, was neglected and physically abused until she died. They say her parents, Kristen Meyer and Alejandro “Alex” Aleman, intentionally killed her.

    Two grand juries have indicted the mother and the father on first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse felony charges.


    In a rare step, prosecutors insist the parents deserve the death penalty because the crimes against their own daughter were so awful.


    Meyer’s legal team says the premeditated murder count should be thrown out before it ever gets that far, because the evidence doesn’t support it and it violates her Constitutional rights.


    The defense suggests Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo could instead reduce it to an aggravated manslaughter charge that would eliminate the death penalty as a possibility.


    “There is no evidence that Ms. Meyer intentionally withheld sustenance from Tayla for any purpose ... nor is there evidence that Ms. Meyer had a motive to kill Tayla or stood to gain from Tayla’s death,” wrote Public Defender Carey Haughwout. “To the contrary, all the evidence ... unequivocally demonstrates that Tayla’s death was the result of neglect.”


    But if the murder charge remains and the jury returns a conviction, prosecutors will ask the panel to recommend a death sentence.

    Assistant State Attorney Terri Skiles has outlined seven reasons for it, including arguments that the killing was “heinous, atrocious or cruel.” Other factors are that the victim was “particularly vulnerable” and that the parents “knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons.”

    Among their objections, Meyer’s lawyers blasted the claim that the mother put her entire brood in mortal danger.

    “There is no evidence to indicate the other children were malnourished or abused,” Haughwout wrote, “and no evidence … has been produced to show any child suffered any great risk of death.”


    There will be separate trials. Meyer, 46, is up first, with jury selection set to begin March 13. She plans to use an insanity defense.


    But Aleman, 42, is putting the blame on his wife. He argues she was a stay-at-home mom responsible for feeding and caring for their daughter while he was out working.

    A ‘spotless’ home

    Tayla Aleman was born in a Martin County hospital on March 7, 2015, after a full-term, 40-week pregnancy, records show. She weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces, without any apparent health concerns.

    Three months later, Tayla moved with her sister, eight brothers and parents to a rented, one-story house on 30th Lane in Loxahatchee, just north of Lion Country Safari.


    In response to complaints that the house was dirty and the children had “inadequate supervision,” an investigator from the state Department of Children and Families showed up with a sheriff’s deputy around late October that year for a surprise inspection.


    But Aleman refused to let them in. “Mr. Aleman was upset and he told her he was tired of people calling DCF on him and he wanted her to obtain a warrant in order to give her access into his home,” a report stated.


    They returned in December 2015, with a court order and without a prior warning. Aleman then “apologized to them for the miscommunication” and opened the door.


    “You guys didn’t have to go through all this,” Aleman told his visitors. “I would [have] let you see the kids.”


    The inspector found a “spotless” home and no obvious concerns about the physical condition of the children, ranging in age from the baby to 15.


    “The children appeared clean, with no marks or bruises,” the inspector said. “The baby was a skinny seven-month-old baby but not skinny to the point where the baby appeared as if she was not being fed.”


    The only oddity was that the kids didn’t speak. “They all made grunting noises and weird sounds when they would respond to their questions,” records show, noting that Meyer told the inspector “the children would grow out of it” and she “did not see anything wrong with her children’s speech.”


    Meyer explained that she home-schools all the kids, while Aleman said he was a tow truck driver and a repo man.


    The rooms appeared tidy, beds were made, and there were no unpleasant smells. It looked, the inspector said, “like a model house.”

    Baby stopped breathing

    On the early evening of April 1, 2016, Aleman called his wife asking what was for dinner. Meyer later said she was trying to feed Tayla at that time, but the baby didn’t want her bottle. She said she thought Tayla must have been full after a feeding a few hours earlier.

    After Meyer hung up the call, she noticed the baby in her arms “appeared a little lethargic as if she was sleepy.” Then she realized the baby wasn’t breathing. She called Aleman back, and he told her to call 911. It was 6:30 p.m.

    The 911 dispatcher walked Meyer through CPR instructions, until paramedics arrived and took the baby to nearby Palms West Hospital. But Tayla didn’t have a pulse and she couldn’t be saved.


    A fire-rescue report notes that the baby’s ribs were visible through her skin, and she appeared malnourished enough for the paramedics to ask the mom if the baby had cancer or another disease.


    Medical experts say a normal weight for a girl that age is about 20 pounds.


    Aleman refused to speak with investigators that night at the hospital, citing the advice of his attorney. But Meyer, who was in another room, agreed to talk.


    “Mrs. Meyer-Aleman told me [Tayla] was a perfectly healthy baby who was fine until this evening,” Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Detective Vionide Saint-Jean wrote in a report. “Mrs. Meyer-Aleman told me she cannot understand what happened because everything occurred so fast. She said one minute [Tayla] was fine and suddenly she just stopped breathing while in her arms and now she is dead.”


    The house ‘reeked’

    At 6 a.m. the next day, law enforcement showed up with a court-ordered search warrant to examine the home.

    DCF workers brought a van to take custody of the nine other children, over the objection of their parents.


    “I observed the children had what appeared to be either bug bites all over their limbs or some sort of rash,” Detective James Suarez wrote in a report. “They were all in a very deep sleep as if they were completely exhausted.”


    He added, “During this time I had to exit and re-enter the home as the smell was so overwhelming.”


    Detective Saint-Jean shared similar observations:


    “Upon entering the home I was overwhelmed by a strong, pungent odor of urine and feces … the house reeked so bad one can smell [it] from the far end of the driveway leading to the house … once inside the house there were flies, gnats and what appeared to may have been fleas swarming the house.”


    He noted that the bedroom carpets were wet, sticky and stained black.

    “The toilets were filled with unflushed [waste] and it appeared as though the toilet was not working,” the detective wrote in another report. “Inside of the laundry room was a pile of clothes so high it was difficult to open the door.”


    Little food to eat

    They found one baby bottle and a half-filled container of baby formula powder. Tayla apparently had slept near her parents in a “dirty playpen that appeared to convert into a basinet.”

    Saint-Jean said the bulldog, named Achilles, was found inside a rusted crate, filled with the animal’s waste, about 3 inches thick, and two empty food bowls. A report from county animal inspectors said the dog’s hip and ribs were visible, along with pressure sores, overgrown nails, and fur stained yellow and brown.


    Aleman didn’t object to Achilles’ removal, telling officers he rescued the dog two weeks earlier from a homeless woman in Lake Worth because he wanted to help the underweight animal.


    Kitchen trash cans were filled with dog poop, “which flies and fleas were hovering over,” Saint-Jean wrote.


    Investigators noted the kitchen had two refrigerators. One was empty. The other contained “a half-gallon of milk, another gallon of some unknown chunky liquid that appeared to be expired and rotten. There were very limited edible items for the children to eat. There were a couple cans of soup and some large-sized bottles of condiments such as ketchup and mustard and a half loaf of moldy bread.”

    There was a frozen pizza and two bags of frozen fries. The kitchen cabinets contained peanut butter, spices, canned soup, a box of macaroni and cheese, a pack of crackers, a box of pasta and condiments.


    After Meyer and Aleman were arrested, then DCF Secretary Mike Carroll called Tayla's death "senseless and avoidable."


    The agency had come in contact with the family at least four times from 2013 to 2015, and later acknowledged there were missed chances by inspectors to intervene.


    “In response to this case, we implemented mandatory additional training for all child protective investigators and supervisors in the region,” Carroll said in a statement. Supervisors also were given more power to step in and assist children perceived to be in danger.


    Parents deny responsibility


    After being booked in jail, Meyer and Aleman spoke separately to detectives. Both denied any responsibility for Tayla’s demise.

    “We all loved her, I treat all my kids the same way,” Meyer said. “All this happened, and it threw my family into a turmoil. I mean, it’s, it’s broken my heart.”


    In between sobs, Meyer continued, “I don’t think anyone understands what it’s done to me. It’s killed me inside.”


    Meyer mentioned how she had recently given birth to another baby — she was pregnant when Tayla died.


    Asked why Tayla weighed just 7 pounds, Meyer said: “I guess I never saw that. I knew she was small, but as the mother of 10 children, and now 11 … I never had a problem feeding her … she never not wanted the bottle … in my mind I never thought I was doing anything wrong.”


    Aleman also repeatedly insisted that Tayla had been eating.


    “I’m going to say it again: Tayla ate,” Aleman said. “Right now, I’m being arrested for no reason. I did not commit this crime. … I’m very confused about why I’m being charged with murder.”


    In the interview, the father gave credit to his wife, saying she’s “always been a good mother, always there for the kids, does everything she can for the kids.”


    But Michael Salnick, the attorney for Aleman, wants to keep Aleman’s interview from the jury. In a request for the spouses to have separate trials, Salnick wrote Aleman “is pointing the finger at his Wife/Co-Defendant, stay-at-home mother and sole care giver of the child.”


    Aleman said he never carried the baby in his arms.


    “I don’t hold little kids,” he said. “There’s no law that I have to hold my daughter.”


    But a detective challenged him: “No, it’s a law that you have to make sure she’s eating and to check in on her and look. And when you see that she’s not looking right and you see that she’s not gaining weight, it is your responsibility and obligation to take her to the doctor.”

    Aleman replied: “My daughter ate. That’s all I can tell you.”

    Battle over evidence

    Preparing for Meyer’s trial, her lawyers requested that the jury not hear most of her interview, including some statements and questions by the detectives.

    They argue much of the commentary is “irrelevant and prejudicial,” including a round of extensive questioning about unsanitary conditions inside the home.


    “Ms. Meyer is not on trial for being a bad housekeeper,” wrote Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow.


    He said the detectives frequently inserted their own opinions, such as an observation that Tayla’s skin was hanging off of her “like a chicken wing.”


    Salnick agrees his client’s statements should be thrown out because of the detectives’ “gratuitous comments,” and it “simply records the defendant repeatedly professing his innocence.”


    Meyer’s defense also doesn’t want the jury to see videos and photos of the home as it appeared when the baby died, because it is “an attempt to cast a negative light on Ms. Meyer.”

    “The fact the home was odorous or hazardous does not tend to prove or disprove the material fact that [Tayla] was malnourished,” Public Defender Haughwout wrote last month.


    The defense is not disputing that the baby didn’t get enough food to live, so they are objecting to plans by prosecutors to call in five doctors to testify as a “needless waste of time.”


    The jury, they argue, must decide only “Ms. Meyer’s culpability for the death.”


    To that end, the lawyers plan to present evidence that she was insane at the time. Because of her bipolar disorder, “she did not know what she did was wrong or the consequences of her actions or inactions,” Haughwout told the court.


    There’s still another charge against the couple — a misdemeanor animal cruelty count over alleged inhumane treatment of the dog.


    Attorneys for Meyer and Aleman say the jury shouldn’t consider the animal cruelty allegations at the same time, because “evidence of the dog’s condition and treatment is not relevant” to Tayla’s death.


    Meyer’s counsel also argued the jurors already will be asked to “put aside any natural revulsion they may feel” for a woman accused of deliberately killing her child. So adding a suffering dog to the mix will upset animal lovers on the panel, they reason.


    Judge Caracuzzo recently ruled the jury will hear all about the malnourished dog, because the issues are all related.


    “The allegations happened in the same time frame in the same household while under the care of the same people,” the judge explained. “If two children had died from lack of proper care, the cases would appropriately be tried together. The Court sees no difference that an animal who may have suffered from the same lack of nourishment and survived to be legally different."

    https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/cr...cza-story.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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