Christopher Wells pleads guilty to murder of 19-year-old he abused as a 2-month-old

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Christopher Michael Wells lost his temper with his tiny, 2-month-old daughter, inflicting grave brain injuries on baby Christina. He went to prison for child abuse. She went into foster care and never learned to speak or walk.

After a lifetime of disability, Christina died just shy of her 20th birthday of complications from that childhood trauma. And Wells, all those years later, was charged with her death.

On Monday, the 42-year-old father pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He'll get credit for the time he has spent in jail since his arrest in 2006.
[...]

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis said the myriad legal issues in the case left open the possibility for years of appeals.

As part of his plea agreement, Wells waived all future appeals.

"They will be non-issues now," Halkitis said. "He has no appellate remedies."

The case, at first glance, could appear to be double jeopardy — trying a person twice for the same crime — which is constitutionally prohibited.

But Robert Batey, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, said this case involves two separate offenses.

"The first crime was some form of assault, and the second crime was murder," Batey said. "He could not have been charged with homicide back in 1986 because the victim was not dead."

Wells' attorneys also tried initially to have the murder charge dismissed under an old English common law tenet that a defendant cannot be charged with murder if the victim died more than a year and a day after infliction of the fatal injury.

That was also the law in Florida in 1986, the year Christina was injured. It followed, then, that a death that occurred two decades after the crime could not be murder, Wells' lawyer said then.

A judge refused to toss the case, but Halkitis said Monday those legal questions could have kept it hanging, particularly given the uniqueness of the case.

Christina was a redheaded infant living in Hudson when her father, then just 19, shook her and slapped her in a fit of frustration. He demonstrated for investigators how he covered her mouth to squelch her wails. The baby suffered the effects of suffocation-type injuries: brain damage, partial blindness and severe physical disabilities.

Wells pleaded guilty in 1989 to a charge of aggravated child abuse, was sentenced to five years in prison and served about a year. His wife, Tina, was also charged and served a year.

It was after Christina's death on March 15, 2006, while in the care of her adoptive mother, that Pasco authorities announced they were investigating the Wellses for murder. Only Christopher Wells ended up being indicted.
[...]

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/...a-baby/1078253

A medical examiner concluded that her death was attributable to the injuries she suffered two decades earlier. Christopher Wells was charged with first-degree murder. By then, he and Tina Wells were living with their other children in Monticello, Ga.

http://suncoastpasco.tbo.com/content...ughters-death/

[Undeniable Truth]

Good.

I did find this sentence to be a bit horrifying:

By then, he and Tina Wells were living with their other children in Monticello, Ga.

I can imagine that he was watched like a fucking hawk when he was around these other children as babies, and hopefully he still is.

[MadeaBecBec]

Posted on October 27, 2006:

Time cheated Christina Welch. In a few seconds of anger, at the dawn of her life, she was shaken so hard that her brain froze forever.

As others her age stood and walked and drove cars and went to the prom, she sat in a wheelchair and bit herself. She spent more than 19 years on earth, much of it in a back brace and diapers.

Some might call it living. Prosecutors will call it dying.

According to court papers, Wells told a detective from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office that he slapped Christina, shook her, juggled her and put his hand over her mouth -- all to stop her crying.

She had broken ribs and thumbprints on her face when she went to a hospital, according to doctor depositions in the initial child-abuse case. There was a bulge in the soft spot on her skull. Some of her injuries matched those of a drowning victim.

Christina stayed in the care of Maureen Welch, a New Port Richey foster mother who later adopted her. She missed one milestone after another.

Even as her body grew, her head stayed the same size, Dr. Andrew Gellady, who first saw her in 1987, said in a legal deposition. At nearly 3 years old, she had the reflexes of an infant. She responded not to sights or sounds, but to pain.

"What pleasure did she get in life?" said former caregiver Linda Bell. "I don't know of much."

Bell wants justice for the girl she called Beanie.

"She had beautiful reddish hair, but she couldn't see it or decide how she wanted to wear it," Bell said. "She was in a wheelchair her whole short life and only went where others decided."

Christina died March 15, 2006.................

After the Sheriff's Office announced a homicide investigation in August, the Wells family left Moon Lake for Georgia.

Her nourishment flowed in through a tube, Bell said:

"Beanie never had a piece of birthday cake."

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/27/Ta...r__fathe.shtml

Thankful for the caregiving and love shown to "Beanie" by Maureen Welch and Linda Bell, Christinas earthly guardian angels! Beanie may not have been able to express herself, but she knew, in her soul, what they gave to her. God bless you, both!
Now, Beanie is romping across rainbows, laughing out loud and feasting with the Father, in her perfect heavenly body! She will greet you there, one day!

[Undeniable Truth]

From DV's original article at http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/...a-baby/1078253. I wasn't going to post this cut, but damn it made me cry. I can't even blame it on the hormones, either:

Welch, now 77, didn't talk about the unending work of caring for Christina — turning her in her bed every three hours, feeding her, bathing her and monitoring the machines that kept her alive.

She talked only of the joy.

"I loved every minute of it, every second," Welch said, her eyes tearing up. "And I miss her really terribly. I really do."

"I'm lost without her," she said. "I don't know what to do with myself now."

[Ninja0980]

Sometimes there are truly fates worse then death... and this poor girl's life was one of them.
Pain was probably the only thing she felt in her life. At least she is at peace now...free of pain.

[whisperswing]

2 decades after shaking baby, father jailed again

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. (AP) - Soon after Christina Welch turned 18 in the spring of 2005, her biological parents asked permission to pay her a visit. Mike and Tina Wells broke down when the bed covers were pulled back and they saw the state of the girl: so severely brain damaged as a baby that she never learned to walk, talk or sit up by herself.
Maureen Welch, the woman who had adopted her, walked into the kitchen to leave the three of them alone, thinking to herself that it was good the couple finally got to see what Mike Wells had done to his infant daughter.
"I didn't know I hurt her that bad," he said to Welch when he came into the kitchen. He apologized and told Welch she was a guardian angel sent by God to take care of their Christina.
Mike Wells was 19 when he shook his 2-month-old daughter and covered her mouth to stop her from crying. He and Tina Wells were convicted of aggravated child abuse in 1989, and each served less than a year in prison.
They went on with their lives, having several more children together. They raised their growing family in weathered mobile homes in rural Pasco County northwest of Tampa, and then in central Georgia where Mike Wells worked for awhile at a used-tire shop. Neither got in serious trouble again with the law.
[...]
But when Christina died on March 15, 2006, at age 19, a medical examiner ruled the case a homicide: The brain injury her father inflicted almost two decades earlier had caused her death.
The same prosecutor who'd sent Mike Wells away in 1989 came after him again, this time getting a grand jury indictment charging him with murdering his daughter.
Last month, Christopher Michael Wells, now 42, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and got a 15-year prison sentence.

His wife, who wasn't charged in Christina's death, still stays with her mother and children in a trailer in Monticello, Ga., with a yard strewn with toys and household items and secured by four barking dogs. She declined to comment and asked an Associated Press reporter to leave.
[...]
In the next breath, she'll lament that a father who might be a different person now than he was 20 years ago is being taken away from his family.
[...]
Prosecutor Michael Halkitis said charging Wells was an easy decision. Doctors didn't expect the child to live long after the abuse, and Halkitis' office was poised to charge him with murder back then. And he said the medical examiner was clear in his assessment that her death, even though it came nearly 20 years after the abuse, was a homicide.
[...]
Mike and Tina Wells initially took a plea deal and were sentenced to prison for unspecified acts of child abuse against Christina, Halkitis said. Since the infant suffered other injuries - broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a bruise on the head - the prosecutor said he was able to home in on the shaking and covering of the child's mouth as separate, specific acts that caused Christine's brain damage and eventual death.
The judge consistently agreed with Halkitis, rejecting thedefense's double-jeopardy arguments and the claim that Wells couldn't be charged with murder because the death occurred more than a year and a day after the offense, as per old English common law.
[...]
And one of the star trial witnesses would have been the plainspoken Welch, who would have talked about how she turned Christina in bed every three hours, lifted her into a wheelchair for frequent outings and sat up with her as she wailed in pain the night before her death.
None of that matters much to Welch, who still cries sometimes when she talks about her Beanie. She and her late husband, Jim, became the child's foster parents a few months after she was injured and adopted her when she was 5. The couple had six daughters of their own, fostered hundreds of children over the years and adopted four who were disabled.

"I took the kids nobody else wanted," she said.
After her husband died 15 years ago, the diminutive woman lifted and carried Christina from the bed by herself before the state paid for a mechanical device with slings that made it easier. The track of the machine still snakes from room to room along the ceiling of the aging wooden house.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12328846

Mike Wells

[Tundratot]

See now, this is why I believe the death penalty (or at least the same sentences as for murder) should extend to crimes other than outright murder. The one year sentence he and his wife got for the abuse was a joke. They'd ruined a life, as surely as if they'd killed her. Dragging one or both of them back to court 20 years later for a murder charge, stemming from the same incident, is senseless. I'm glad the prosecutor did it, but it should have been unnecessary. And I don't understand how it isn't double jeopardy, it's the same crime, just a different charge.

[LadyCygnet]

I don't know...the fact that they both broke down and wept when they saw the long-term damage that they had done to their daughter indicates to me that they were young and ignorant (too immature to be parents, most likely), but they both had consciences great enough to know that their daughter never got to achieve her full potential...and it was ALL THEIR FAULT. I think that's why he pleaded guilty to the murder charges and waved his right to appeal the sentence. He knows what he did, and he knows it destroyed her. I suspect that he will serve his sentence, knowing that his one rash act as a teenager imprisoned his baby girl for 19 long years.

Maureen Welch needs to be honored for her selfless love and care for Christina. The world needs more men and women like her--people that will step up and take children like these into their homes and hearts and show them real love. I admire her deeply--I don't know if I would be strong enough to be able to provide that level of care to my own daughter, much less an abused child adopted into my home. She is a hero.

[Dneilz]

I agree....

Let's remember that 20 years ago, it wasn't common knowledge of what shaking a baby could do. Not like we hear today. I also am looking at the fact that he was also 20 years younger and less experienced. I am in NO way saying what he did was okay. But I do feel this is a case of double jeopardy. I feel that they charged and gave him a sentence back then for this.... and coming 20 years later and charging him basically again, does no body any good.... and I do not see it as constitutional.

What he did was terrible. Absolutely. However, he has went 20 years with no problems with the law. He hasn't hurt his other children and NOW he is ripped away from those children. I just don't see where this does any good.

I have done some stupid shit when I was, say 19. Seriously. But at my age now (36) I AM a different person. I have lived more life and I am more aware of my actions and their consequences. A 19 year old father is young. And not to mention boys grow emotionally at a much slower rate than females. I just don't agree with what the prosecutor has done with this situation. He did wrong, no doubt.... but it was 20 years ago and he has already been charged and sentenced his time.
Imagine what this could do to other people who have been in trouble or fucked up in the past......... I mean, if the law is that open to interpretation of what Double jeopardy is.
I am all for punishing those who hurt children, but I am also very concerned about what this case says in regard to human rights...and constitutional rights. Very scary.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

If someone hits you and then, two days later, kicks you, is that one assault or two? I say it's two.

The baby suffered the effects of suffocation-type injuries: brain damage, partial blindness and severe physical disabilities.
[...]

Halkitis planned to present testimony from the medical examiner who determined Christina's death was a homicide, caused by complications of blunt trauma.

Her initial injuries were caused by smothering. Her death was caused by complications from blunt trauma. Smothering and hitting/shaking are not the same actions.

I'm guessing that part of the reason they could charge him with murder is because there were several instances of abuse (slapping, smothering, shaking - plus whatever may not have been mentioned in the media) and he was never charged with them all. It all boils down to how the original charges were written up.

[Dneilz]

That makes sense. So there were different incidents in this case. Well that is different. But still, 20 years later they charge him.... I don't know, it just seems shady.

He definitely should pay for what he has done, but I don't know about the whole "waiting till she dies" deal. He should have been charged back then and then all of the children left without a father wouldn't be paying for what he did.

Again, I am not defending him because what he did is wrong. I just don't take kindly to the fact they didn't charge him until 20 years later when she died from complications of the injuries. It sounds to me like he is a changed person and was sorry for what he had done. He had not abused the additional children he fathered, from what I understand....

While it is justice for his daughter that he left in a vegetative helpless state....and I agree with that, I just don't understand why they didn't charge him back in the day when he should have been charged. (shrug)

[Dneilz]

On a side note:
He looks like a scary mother fucker....

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Think of it this way: She had a long, slow, lingering, (maybe painful but uncomfortable at minimum) death. It really doesn't matter if it took 2 minutes, 2 hours or days or weeks or years or decades. His actions caused her death.

If I kill someone and run off and hide for 20 years, make a new good life, does it make it any better because it only took my victim 2 minutes to die or that I "did good" for the rest of my life?

I'm happy that he has changed. But that does not mean that one gets a free pass on responsibilities. I think his plea shows even he understands that.

[whisperswing]

See this is normal here (the upgrade to murder)
even when broadcasting a story on news about someone in fight downtown here at bars and someones beaten badly(all the time here b.c age is 19 here to drink so american kids pile into city every weekend)
they make remarks,"so and so is charged with assault but those can be upgraded in time"
I would bet that Chris Wells knew all along that if something happenend he could be recharged I think the thing thats getting to people is the fact its been 20 yrs

we have millions of Drunk Driving Commercials here and theres 1 that shows a University girl running track and in band
won track awards all over the country
was hit by drunk driver and survived 12 yrs as a vegetable basically and that guy was charged after she died
Ill try and find it in a bit b/c its an american commercial

[MadmamainNC]

Originally Posted by Tundratot

See now, this is why I believe the death penalty (or at least the same sentences as for murder) should extend to crimes other than outright murder. The one year sentence he and his wife got for the abuse was a joke. They'd ruined a life, as surely as if they'd killed her. Dragging one or both of them back to court 20 years later for a murder charge, stemming from the same incident, is senseless. I'm glad the prosecutor did it, but it should have been unnecessary. And I don't understand how it isn't double jeopardy, it's the same crime, just a different charge.

Not the same crime. First crime was abuse/assult, second crime was murder.

A man shoots someone and doesn't kill him but the bullet is still lodge in the victims skull. Man may get attempted murder or aggravated assault depending on the circumstance. If the victim dies a week later or 20 years later, from the bullet or complications as a direct result of the shooting, it becomes murder in whatever degree.

What was the movie with Anthony Hopkins -Fracture? Prime example of how this works.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488120/

[Special2bme]

Welch, Christina's adoptive mother who is now 77, raises another disabled child she adopted in the tiny wooden house with purple trim where she loved and doted on Christina until the end.

What an incredible woman!!!