Make Death Penalty For Killing Children Mandatory!

A man accused of beating, scalding and neglecting a 2-year-old Elkton boy who died in 2007 received a 10-year prison term on Tuesday after accepting a plea bargain.

The victim’s biological mother, meanwhile, is awaiting her May trial in the abusive death case.

Police charged the couple after the boy, Wilkins Jeanty, reportedly choked to death on a waffle on Nov. 20, 2007, inside their home in the unit block of Elk Chase Drive while the mother’s 29-year-old live-in boyfriend, Davidson Novembre, slept.

The boy’s death spurred an investigation in which detectives and forensic examiners discovered numerous bruises and scarring consistent with physical abuse, including scald burns on the child’s anus, buttocks and genitals.

Doctors who performed the autopsy listed asphyxia as the cause of death, although they couldn’t determine if the boy accidentally choked or if he had been deliberately gagged.

But, according to prosecutors, “a pattern of abuse” factored into the boy’s death.

“(Investigators) found scars and welts down the back, buttocks and legs inflicted by beatings with either a coat hanger or a looped extension cord,” Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin B. Urick told a judge on Tuesday.

They also discovered scald burns consistent with the intentional dousing of hot water onto the skin — and inconsistent with scalding suffered in a shower or bath, as the defendants had explained, Urick reported.

In addition, investigators determined that the victim’s 6-year-old brother was frequently left alone to care for Wilkins for long periods.

“It is highly unusual for a child who is healthy to choke on a waffle because it is a very soft food … but what we have here is a continuum of intentional abuse and neglect, and it culminated in the death of Wilkins,” Urick said in court.

Novembre pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and first-degree child abuse on Tuesday as part of a binding plea agreement in which prosecutors dropped several related counts, including second-degree murder and first-degree assault.

Cecil County Circuit Court Judge O. Robert Lidums imposed a maximum 10-year sentence on Novembre for manslaughter, following the conditions of the binding plea agreement. The judge also imposed a concurrent 20-year prison term for child abuse, before suspending half of the sentence.

Lidums ordered Novembre to serve five years of supervised probation upon his release from a yet-to-be-determined Maryland Department of Corrections prison.

The judge credited Novembre for time he has served in the Cecil County Detention Center in lieu of $1 million bond since his Nov. 19 arrest.

Clad in a green detention center T-shirt and green and white horizontally striped pants, Novembre declined to speak on his own behalf in court.

His lawyer, Peter S. O’Neill of Glen Burnie, told the judge that Novembre, who has some college credits, had been working as a security guard for three years before his arrest.

O’Neill also reported that Novembre, a native of Haiti, received an honorable discharge after serving in the U.S. Navy from 2001 to 2004. Novembre served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to O’Neill.

The judge warned Novembre that his convictions would likely result in his deportation at some point.

Novembre’s co-defendant, Fabiola Durand Jeanty, 28, is charged with first-degree child abuse resulting in death, rendering a child in need of assistance, making a false statement to a police officer and obstruction of justice.

Jeanty was at work when Wilkins choked to death on the waffle. When Novembre awoke and discovered the incapacitated boy at his bedroom door, he called 911 and attempted CPR, he told police.

Prosecutors allege that Jeanty was aware of the physical abuse doled out by Novembre, whom Urick described in court as the “disciplinarian,” and that she covered up for him.

Jeanty, who remains in the county jail in lieu of bond, is scheduled for a motions hearing on Friday. Her jury trial is set to start on May 18.