Man found guilty in death of 7-year-old

A Clark County jury took less than two hours to convict a 36-year-old man of first-degree murder Friday in the beating death of 7-year-old Roderick “RJ” Arrington.

Markiece Palmer also was found guilty of two counts of child abuse, neglect or endangerment with substantial bodily harm for the nearly three months of torture on his wife’s son, charges Palmer’s lawyer did not dispute.

Prosecutors said the abuse began the moment Markiece Palmer entered RJ’s life and continued until the boy died after his head was slammed against a bedroom wall in late November 2012.

The boy’s mother, Dina Palmer, who initially faced a murder charge, pleaded guilty in September to two counts of child abuse and testified for the prosecution during her husband’s trial.

She told jurors that on the night of Nov. 28, 2012, Markiece Palmer shook RJ, and the boy’s head snapped back into the wall. RJ died two days later.

Markiece Palmer admitted to shaking RJ but told police the boy then quickly scrambled out of the room.

On Thursday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Staudaher played a video of Palmer demonstrating how he punished RJ.

He would make the boy stand against a wall with his arms spread out or make him bend over and touch his toes while being whipped with a cord, a broomstick, or a belt.

The couple regularly took turns beating RJ, whether he lied about reading the Bible, falling asleep while reading or returned home from school with a bad grade, or told the truth about his feelings toward Markiece Palmer.

“He didn’t want to get in trouble,” Staudaher said. “He didn’t want to get whooped.”

Palmer used the abuse as an excuse to instill honesty in the boy he had known only since September of that year, the prosecutor told jurors, and used Scripture to justify his actions and manipulate Dina Palmer.

“Because he’s the one in charge,” Staudaher said. “He makes the rules. He is the one that imposes his will upon everybody around him.”

Defense lawyer Carl Arnold acknowledged the ongoing abuse of RJ, saying “it would be absolutely ludicrous” to dispute the child abuse charges.

But he tried to paint Dina Palmer as a liar, saying her story had changed several times since the couple was arrested and that she was “protecting herself from the murder charge.”

Throughout the trial, Staudaher pointed to a crack in the wall of RJ’s bedroom at 6 feet 3 inches high.

During closing arguments, Arnold used a punching bag in an attempt to show that Markiece Palmer would not have been able to lift the 4½-foot tall, 71-pound boy that high.

Arnold raised the 70-pound bag and hit it against a wall in District Judge David Barker’s courtroom near the jury box.

“Physically, it just doesn’t make sense,” Arnold said.

A neighbor who drove RJ to school on Nov. 28, 2012, testified Tuesday that she told school officials the second-grader had trouble walking and sitting. She also called Clark County Child Protective Services with her suspicions. The night before, she heard yelling between a man and woman in the apartment next door.

A school counselor called a child welfare hotline with suspicions of abuse at the boy’s home, but social workers never responded to the school.

RJ suffered his fatal injuries at home that night.

A Child Protective Services investigator assigned to RJ’s case testified that the calls “should have been handled differently.”

After the jury of eight men and four women reached a verdict, Arnold said he did not believe they deliberated the case.

Though he acknowledged that the case was “next to impossible to win,” Arnold said he believed Dina Palmer had more culpability in RJ’s death than she admitted.

She originally told police that RJ hit his head on a kitchen table, but testified at trial that the story was made up.

“It’s indicative that she was lying from Day One,” Arnold said. “They key (to the murder charge) is who did that fatal blow to the head. I think Dina is the one who caused it.”

Staudaher said Markiece Palmer was “as guilty of this crime as he could be.” Palmer is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 21, 2015.

In closing arguments, the prosecutor detailed months of abuse that started shortly after RJ moved from Illinois to be with his mother and Markiece Palmer.

When he died, RJ’s body was riddled with more than 100 welts, bruises and cuts on his arms, abdomen, back, legs, thighs and buttocks. The boy’s brain was swollen from having been slammed against the wall.

“This kid was, for all intents and purposes, abused from the moment he got in town until the moment he got in the ground,” Staudaher said. “He did not stand a chance. Not a chance in that household.”

Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker