A lawyer asked a judge Friday to dismiss the charges filed against a young man from Elwood man who has been accused of killing an 18-month-old girl.
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Earlier this year, the case went before a grand jury, and the members approved the murder charges. Goldstein argued Friday that Will County State's Attorney Jim Glasgow gave the jurors inaccurate evidence during the proceedings.
Goldstein had several concerns about the testimony heard by the grand jury. For example, at one point April 15, Halli's mother was away from the Elwood home and Ponshe was taking care of the child, Goldstein told the judge. When Dunlap returned, something was wrong with Halli, so she called 911.
When paramedics arrived, they could see that the unresponsive little girl was hurt. "The child had ... facial trauma," Goldstein said.
During the autopsy, numerous bruises were found on the girl's head and body, and one of her eyes was lacerated, Goldstein said.
When Ponshe was interviewed on videotape by the Elwood police, he admitted to striking the child because she wouldn't stop crying, Goldstein said. Ponshe even demonstrated the way that he hit her by rapping his knuckles on a table. But Ponshe didn't say that he punched the girl several times, although an assistant state's attorney told the jurors it had happened.
"He specifically said, 'I never punched her,'" Goldstein said.
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Additionally, the jurors didn't know that not long before her death, Halli had fallen several feet into a gravel-filled crawl space at the home, Goldstein said.
"The cause of death is blunt force trauma which could just as easily be attributed to a fall as a punch to the top of the head," Goldstein argued.
Will County Assistant State's Attorney Jim Long asked the judge not to dismiss the charges.
"There is absolutely nothing misleading whatsoever," Long said.
Calling the blow a punch or a strike was a matter of semantics, Long argued.
"The fact that they didn't learn anything about the crawl space incident is neither here nor there," Long argued, explaining that Ponshe said the girl wasn't hurt by the fall.
At the end of the hearing, the judge said he wanted to see the videotape of Ponshe's police interview before he made a decision, adding that he wouldn't be on the bench next week.
The case will return to court at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 18.