Gauvin found guilty of felony
neglect
Aiyana's father
could face 20-50 years in prison
By SOPHIA VORAVONG
November 3, 2006
svoravong@journalandcourier.com
LAPORTE -- Christian Gauvin's
insistence in taking the stand Thursday morning just might be what
solidified in the minds of jurors his guilt for the death of his
4-year-old daughter, Aiyana.
When pressed by Tippecanoe County
deputy prosecutor Laura Zeman whether he failed as a father, Gauvin
looked down and sighed:
"Yes. I did."
He will now have the next 20 to 50
years in prison to think about what went wrong in the weeks leading
up to Aiyana's death on March 16, 2005 -- some of which he tried to
explain during 31/2 hours of testimony in LaPorte Circuit Court.
Nonetheless, the LaPorte County
jury of six men and six women found Gauvin, 35, guilty of a single
count of Class A felony neglect of a dependent resulting in the
girl's death.
Gauvin showed no visible reaction
when the verdict was read or when individual jurors were polled.
(Left: Christian Gauvin is escorted
to Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 by transport officer Jim Weedon
(foreground) and bailiff Mark Christian for his neglect trial in the
death of his 4-year-old daughter, Aiyana. He was found guilty on
Thursday night.)
Jurors -- who deliberated for two
hours Thursday night -- determined that Gauvin knew the extent to
which Aiyana was being abused by her stepmother and his wife,
Michelle Gauvin, and further neglected his only child by leaving
Aiyana in Michelle's care.
Michelle Gauvin was sentenced last
week to life in prison without parole after she pleaded guilty to
murdering Aiyana, who died from a fatal blow to the head.
Christian Gauvin's attorney,
special public defender Patrick Manahan, said he will discuss
appealing the verdict with his client based on rulings made by
presiding Judge Thomas Busch of Tippecanoe Superior Court 2.
Manahan argues that Gauvin was not
fully informed of his right against self-incrimination when he
agreed to talk to police the day Aiyana died. He tried to stop
jurors from seeing three videotaped statements Gauvin gave to
sheriff's detectives.
Busch initially suppressed one of
the statements, but allowed it as state evidence on Thursday because
Gauvin chose to testify in his own defense.
"He wanted to make sure, for the
memory of his daughter, to state accurately what happened," Manahan
said. "No one could have predicted any of this. This was just a
terrible, tragic set of events."
Gauvin testified that he was
intimidated by his wife, who actually seemed to enjoy fighting and
bickering. He agreed that tying up Aiyana was an extreme form of
punishment.
He was watching his daughter the
night before she died, when Michelle took her two children out of
the home for about 90 minutes.
Christian Gauvin said Michelle
brought Aiyana into their bedroom while the little girl was strapped
in a booster seat with both of her hands restrained and white
surgical tape covering her mouth. Christian Gauvin removed Aiyana
while Michelle left -- only to quickly return the girl to her prior
condition when he heard them come home.
Asked by his attorney why, Gauvin
responded, "I was afraid."
"I didn't think she was going to
die. I didn't think things were that severe. ... She didn't look
like that the night before," he said of the photos taken of his
bruised and battered daughter at the morgue.
Gauvin, however, refused to look at
one of the photos Zeman, the deputy prosecutor, handed to him on the
stand.
"I was just a recluse and a hermit
in my bedroom, playing video games with my heating pad on," Zeman
mocked. "The dog got to sleep in the heated house, and you put her
in the unheated garage."
Tippecanoe County prosecutor Jerry
Bean, who presented the case with Zeman, said he hopes the guilty
verdict brings some closure to Aiyana's family.
The verdict came the same day as
the second summit aimed at stopping child abuse was held in
Lafayette. Bean said several strides have been made since the
community outrage caused by Aiyana's death, including more reports
of neglect and sexual abuse.
"Even one is too many," he said.
Jurors also watched the previously
suppressed interrogation with sheriff's Lt. Steve Kohne, in which
Gauvin admitted to slapping Aiyana across the face and tying her
arms across her back.
"All I want to do is sit down and
cry, and I just keep fighting it," he is heard saying to himself
while alone in the police interview room. "I just feel like I am
going to explode."
