Judge OKs Use Of CPS Report, Photos Showing Messy House In Macomb County Child Abuse Case
MOUNT CLEMENS (WWJ/AP) - A judge has decided prosecutors can use a report and photos depicting a messy house against a Macomb County couple whose 11-month-old daughter died after eating a morphine pill.
Harold Murphy, 42, and his 38-year-old wife Kimberly Murphy, of Warren, are charged with second-degree child abuse in the October 2013 death of Trinity Murphy. Prosecutors argue that the couple committed the "reckless act" of maintaining an extremely messy house that allowed the child to ingest the pill that was intended for her recently deceased grandmother.
"The reckless act is that their house is a pigsty," Yasmin Poles, an assistant Macomb County prosecutor, previously argued in court. "It's a reckless act because their child is dead. They were supposed to make sure the child was not given access to the room where the grandmother died."
The judge recently granted a prosecutor's motion to allow the jury to see photos of the house and a Children's Protective Services report indicting the house was in disarray. A trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 1.
Trinity's grandmother, who had lived in the Sterling Heights house, died of cancer about two weeks before the child found the pill. Kimberly Murphy told police it was "very likely" her mother had dropped the pill on the floor where Trinity later found it.
Attorneys for the Murphys have said that no one knows how the child got the pill. Nijad Mehenna, attorney for Kimberly Murphy, said pills were found in a container on a closet shelf several feet off the floor.
"There is no testimony anybody observed anybody giving Trinity that pill or saw Trinity Murphy consume that pill," Mehenna said. "If the pills were anywhere within reach of an 11-month-old child, that's a reckless act. … We don't have that whatsoever in this particular case."
After Trinity's death, police found the home in disarray and with an illegal electrical hookup, the Macomb Daily reported. The couple lost their parental rights of their four other children following a trial before different judge. That decision has been appealed.
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