Toddler’s beating death draws 30-year sentence

A 34-year-old Sherwood man was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday for the fatal beating of a toddler four years ago.

As potential jurors waited to be called to hear evidence in Lakedrin Damone Smith’s second trial regarding the July 2008 death of 2 1 ⁄ 2- yearold Braylon Alexander, Smith pleaded no contest to second-degree murder before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims.

Smith had been baby-sitting the boy — the son of Smith’s girlfriend Delois Alexander — on June 30, 2008, at the woman’s Jacksonville home when he called her at work to say Braylon appeared ill, senior deputy prosecutor Terry Ball told the judge Tuesday.

Alexander returned home to find the boy limp with his eyes rolled back in his head, said Ball, joined by Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley.

Braylon was rushed to a Jacksonville hospital but was moved the next day to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock once doctors realized the extent of his injuries.

Doctors found serious and multiple bruises, Ball told the judge.

An autopsy found eight impact sites on Braylon’s head.

Smith told doctors the boy was injured when he fell and hit his head while playing outside unattended.

Smith was arrested two days after the boy’s death.

Smith and Alexander subsequently had a son in May 2010.

Smith had been charged with capital murder, but prosecutors reduced the charge to first-degree murder after Smith’s first trial in December 2010 ended with a mistrial when jurors could not reach a verdict after five hours of deliberations.

He was scheduled for a three- day trial beginning Tuesday but agreed to drop his legal challenges to a charge of second-degree murder in exchange for the 30-year sentence.

At Smith’s 2010 trial, his attorney, Ron Davis, said prosecutors had no hard evidence against his client, pointing out that no one had seen Smith abuse the boy. Davis asked jurors to consider that someone could have attacked Braylon while Smith wasn’t watching, a scenario that Davis argued was possible at a time in history when children are regularly abducted by strangers.

Smith didn’t testify at that trial but told doctors he was inside the home making a phone call when Braylon got hurt.

At the trial, Davis said indications that the toddler had been shaken could have been from Smith’s clumsy efforts to revive the boy.

According to medical testimony at trial, Braylon died of brain swelling.

One doctor said his injuries were too severe to have been caused by a fall and compared the child’s head trauma with being thrown from a moving car.

Of the eight impacts to the boy’s head, the most significant one was a 6-inch skull fracture that ran from the side of the toddler’s head above his right ear to the base of his skull where it intersects with the spine, the medical examiner who performed the toddler’s autopsy testified at the time.