Oxendine v. State

On January 18, 1984, Oxendine’s girlfriend pushed Oxendine’s six year old son into the bathtub, causing tears in his intestines. When Oxendine came home from work, he saw bruises on the child and knew that the girlfriend had beaten the child during the day.

The next morning, Oxendine went into the boy’s bedroom and screamed at him to get up. A neighbor testified to hearing sounds of blows being struct, obscenities uttered by a male voice, and cries from a child saying, “Please stop, Daddy, it hurts.”

Later in the day, the boy’s abdomen became swollen. When Oxendine arrived home from work, the girlfriend urged him to take him to the hospital. Oxendine, believing that the boy was exaggerating, went out, bought a newspaper, and returned home to read it. Upon his return, the girlfriend had prepared to take the boy to the hospital. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.

At trial, two medical experts testified that the boy’s death was caused by intra-abdominal hemorrhage, occurring as a result of blunt force trauma to the front of the abdomen. They each identified two distinct injuries, one caused more than twenty four hours before death and one inflicted less than twenty four hours before death. One expert could not separate the effects of the two injuries, and the other was of the opinion that the earlier injury was the underlying cause of death.

Oxendine was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment.