Mobile murder trial: Judge rejects constitutional challenge to child witness testimony
Prosecutors plan to introduce out-of-court statements from a 6-year-old boy in the killing of his 3-year-old brother, after a judge ruled the testimony is admissible under state law.
By Meera Fletcher ·
Mobile County Circuit Judge Michael Windom rejected a constitutional challenge to the admissibility of child witness testimony in a capital murder case on Thursday.
The ruling allows prosecutors to present statements made by Tyren Edwards' older brother, who was six years old at the time, to the jury. The victim, Tyren Edwards, was one month shy of his fourth birthday when he died at the University of South Alabama Children’s and Women’s Hospital in August 2021. Prosecutors allege the boy suffered severe abuse for weeks or months before his death. Abraham Hatch, 24, of Mobile, is accused of killing the child, who was his girlfriend’s son. The District Attorney’s Office is not seeking the death penalty in this case.
Out-of-court statements are typically excluded from trials as hearsay. However, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals previously ruled that the statements fall under an exception in the Child and Protected Person Physical and Sexual Abuse, and Violent Offense Victim Protection Act. That statute permits out-of-court statements from witnesses younger than 12 in abuse cases. Hatch’s attorneys argued that applying this law violated the defendant’s rights under the Fifth, Sixth, and 14th amendments. Judge Windom denied that argument on Thursday.
Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood said the law has been on the books for years and has been used in other cases. "It’s been on the books for a number of years, and we’ve used it in other cases, as well," Blackwood said after the hearing. He expressed confidence that the evidence fits squarely within the child hearsay statute, noting that this was the argument presented at both the circuit and appellate levels.
Defense attorney Buzz Jordan plans to raise a different issue that the appeals court did not address: whether the specific statements made by the victim's brother qualify under the statute. Jordan argued that the hearsay exception requires the statement to include a material element of the charged crime. He stated that the statements in this case describe past incidents of alleged abuse rather than the specific event that caused the injury. "It’s our position the child has never made a statement that that child witnessed this event that caused this injury," Jordan said.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals noted in a February ruling that the defense raised this specific qualification issue for the first time during arguments and did not provide the statements for the court to evaluate. The appellate court ordered Judge Windom to evaluate that argument. Jordan does not expect Tatyana Edwards, the victim’s mother, to go to trial despite her pending felony murder charges, stating she has made a deal with prosecutors. Her trial is currently set for March.
