Dad convicted of 1st-degree murder of 2-year-old son during visitation (St. Louis, Missouri)

Dad AARON LUCY couldn't even manage to get through holiday visitation without brutally beating his 2-year-old son to death for crying.

Not clarified here if visitation was court-ordered, and if so, who the judge was who was responsible for giving this POS access to a child.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-man-convicted-of-beating--year-old-son/article_6cd3fe56-be38-5ee6-9bb9-de7e814f56f2.html

St. Louis man convicted of beating 2-year-old son to death

2013-01-25T12:00:00Z 2013-01-25T17:04:08Z

ST. LOUIS • Amanda Newman’s last interaction with her smiling, happy-go-lucky son was on Christmas day 2010.

As she dropped 2-year-old Kyle Lucy off at his father’s house for a couple days’ stay, “He was fine. He was perfect,” she said on a court witness stand this week. Kyle was eager to show off presents he had opened at her house, and to start on round two.

He never got more than a day with those gifts.

When Newman saw her son next, he was lying in a hospital bed, kept alive only by machines. After conversations with doctors, Newman made the tough decision to take Kyle off life support.

According to prosecutors, the boy’s father, Aaron Lucy, 32, brutally beat his son that Dec. 26, leaving bruises and scrapes on almost every surface of his young body and causing two skull fractures and a fatal brain injury.

On Friday, a St. Louis Circuit Court jury held him responsible, convicting Lucy of first-degree murder and four other felony counts after about six hours of deliberation. Charges in the two-day trial included tampering with evidence, for a shower Lucy took to clean himself of Kyle’s blood despite orders from authorities who responded to his apartment, on the 6900 block of Chippewa Street, after he called for help.

Assistant Circuit Attorney Christine Krug told jurors that nobody knows exactly how the events unfolded. But, she said, “We know Kyle was perfectly fine when he was left with his father. We know he sustained a horrible beating, and we know he died because of that beating.”

According to testimony, Kyle and his 4-year-old sister spent two days at their father’s apartment and that of Lucy’s parents. But for several afternoon and evening hours on Dec. 26, 2010, father and son were left alone for “quality time” while the others went to a Christmas play.

Lucy’s public defender, Courtney Harness, ceded her client’s guilt for the fatal beating but argued it wasn’t the deliberate act of first-degree murder. She described a father who didn’t know how to handle his crying son, who tried several times to get a neighbor’s help, and who finally lost it.

“There’s no evidence he wanted his son to die, in fact, there’s evidence to the contrary,” she said, pointing to testimony that Lucy was sobbing and sought help in calling 911.

Harness also pointed out that Michael Graham, the city’s chief medical examiner, testified the injuries could have been inflicted in just a couple minutes.

But Krug reminded jurors of the extent of Kyle’s injuries, including various bruising patterns that suggested he had been hit with or against different objects. Blood was spread throughout the apartment, including on the back of a picture frame and a shattered drawer, which had been strewn across the floor along with an overturned TV.

During closing arguments, Krug paused for two minutes of silence that seemed longer. It was punctuated by soft sobbing from Kyle’s family.

“You just experienced a couple minutes,” Krug told jurors. “Now imagine little Kyle being beaten by his father, a man four times his size, (during that time) and you want to tell me there’s no deliberation?”

Newman, 29, told a somber jury about her child, “a very happy little boy” who was potty-training and starting to talk. Later, to a reporter, she talked of how he liked SpongeBob SquarePants and Thomas the Tank Engine. He was full of spunk, and smart for his two years. And he loved food.

He’d crawl into bed with his grandfather, who kept a can of nuts on the night table. When Kyle only got one nut, he’d hold up five fingers asking for more.

Once, Newman said, she caught Kyle with the remnants of thin mints smeared across his face.

As she started to gently scold him for sneaking the treats, he held one out as if to share, and innocently asked: “cookie?” As to Lucy, Newman said: “Our hope is that he never gets out.”