Deliberations begin for man charged with murder

Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic descriptions of a child’s death and emergency medical procedures unsuccessfully undertaken to try to save her life.

PALMER — Attorneys for both the state and a man accused of shaking his 15-month-old daughter to death in 2008 made closing arguments to the jury Thursday.

At-times tearful relatives and acquaintances packed the courtroom to standing room only Feb. 12 after days of testimony with relatively sparse attendance. Supporters of the family of Clayton Allison, 31, of Wasilla sported green ribbons filled the courtroom.

Allison stands accused of the shaking death of his daughter Jocelynn Allison. Clayton Allison maintains Jocelynn, who suffered from delayed development and could not walk — according to the defense’s account — it was a fall down eight carpeted steps that resulted in the child’s death.

Father and daughter were alone in the home together at the time of her death, according to testimony at the trial. Without other witnesses, both side’s arguments have turned on whether or not the medical evidence collected in the wake of Jocelynn’s death is conclusive evidence for a shaking death.

Defense witnesses have testified it is not. Defense witnesses have in some cases disputed the entire idea of “shaking baby syndrome,” or adults who kill children by shaking them.

Even if Clayton Allison were found guilty, he probably didn’t mean to kill his daughter, prosecutor Mike Perry told the jury Thursday.

“Nobody is going to argue to you that Mr. Allison intended to kill his child,” he said. “Nobody’s going to argue to you that he is a monster. Nobody believes that.”

Despite the developmental disabilities, Jocelynn had shown improvement in the months leading up to her death, Perry said.

The defense argued that many of the injuries discovered during an autopsy were old injuries, one of which may have played a role in what was ultimately an accidental death.

Not true, Perry said.

“One of the things I’m gonna pound is, what it doesn’t show, is a mysterious growing thing on her brain that’s slowly reaching a tipping point,” he said. “She’s getting better.”

Other injuries leading up to her death, as well as condition updates, showed a little girl who was improving, Perry said.

“She falls and gets a bump, it heals,” he said. “She falls and breaks her leg, it heals, with no signs of distress or complication. She’s a normal child.”

While the both parties dispute the degree of Jocelynn’s mobility, she was still ultimately helpless without an adult, Perry said.

“More importantly for today, this case is about what she couldn’t do, and what she couldn’t do was protect and take care of herself,” he said. “Her father was charged with doing that, and for the most part, staying at home and taking care of her.”

The prosecution’s closing argument revisited physical evidence, including autopsy photographs. Perry pointed to two sets of bruises on Jocelynn’s torso, which Perry said were evidence that the toddler had been shaken hard, though the defense pointed out that none of the medical witnesses consulted in the trial made a similar claim.

Allison’s behavior at the scene was not that of grieving father, Perry added. One first responder testified that the case had stuck with her through more than six years of other trauma cases because of Allison’s atypical behavior, Perry said.

“The fact that she was left alone laying on the floor, left alone struggling to breath and not touched and not comforted and not hovered over was really different, and it stuck out as no other call in her time since then has,” he said.

Perry also accused family members of re-writing Jocelynn’s history to provide emotional support.

“It has been years,” he said. “Years in which everybody has had a chance to talk. Everybody has had a chance to work together and console each other, and so you see a little bit of history rewritten and it is understandable.”

He pointed to an episode where Jocelynn fell during a fishing trip in June, and family members provided different accounts.

“We understand that family members want to come in and they want to help,” he said. “Our memories do that. It doesn’t mean that someone is a liar.”

Defense attorney Hannah Thorssin-Bahri argued that the autopsy for the case was flawed. She first offered a point-by-point refutation of a list of reasons the case was believed to be abuse, and said that in 41 doctor’s appointments with mandatory reporting no abuse was reported.

The state has not shown that Clayton Allison was responsible, that he had caused the injuries, and that he had any motive to injure Jocelynn.

“We spent this whole time sort of talking about whether these injuries were accidental or not, but that’s not the only thing the state has to prove,” she said. “The state also has to prove that the injury happened on or about Sept. 24, 2008, and that Clayton caused the injuries.”

“People don’t just do heinous things for no reason,” Thorssin-Bahri added.

Jury deliberations were expected to begin Thursday afternoon.

Clayton Allison confessed to striking his daughter during an interview with police, but that confession was ruled inadmissible, according to previous reporting.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com or on Twitter @reporterbriano.