RIVERSIDE (AP) ― A Riverside man who beat and scalded his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter, then smoked crack and played video games while she died, was sentenced Friday to just five years and eight months in state prison.
Rodney Jeffocat, 45, was convicted November 14 of involuntary manslaughter, assault on a child likely to produce gret bodily injury, conpiracy to obstruct justice, and battery.
The jury acquitted him of more serious charges, such as second-degree murder and assault on a child under 8 causing death, for which Jeffcoat could have been sent away for 25 years to life.
According to court testimony, Jeffcoat whipped and knocked Kenvesia Blount's head against a wall and pouring boiling water on her. Jeffcoat was punishing the small child because she had wet the bed while she and her mother, Trevesia Blount, 28, of San Diego, were visiting his mother's Riverside home on July 23, 2006.
Jeffcoat then ignored the comatose girl, and played video games and smoked crack while Blount sat in a chair next to her daqughter for one to three days, hoping the child would recover.
The couple did not take the child to the hospital or call an ambulance because Jeffcoat did not want to get arrested for driving on a suspended license, and Blount was concerned Child protective Services would take Kenvesia and her older sister Alexandra away.
The couple finally drove the girl to a hospital in San Diego after her mother found maggots on her.
The couple lied to hospital officials, saying the girl had scalded herself by spilling a pot of boiling water from cooking hot dogs onto herself.
"Everybody was concerned with themselves and not concerned with this child," Judge Peter Deddeh said. "It makes me angry (that) this child died when she didn't have to die."
Deputy District Attorney Harrison Kennedy told jurors that Jeffcoat had been abusing Kenvesia for over six months, since he had started dating his mother in December 2005.
The older sister, Alexandria Blount, testified that Jeffcoat hurt her sister by knocking her head against a wall and pouring boiling water on her.
Trevesia Blount pleaded guilty to felony child abuse and was sentenced to last year to more than twice the sentence that Jeffcoat received. Blount was sent away for 12 years.
The judge noted with frustration that although Jeffcoat was more responsible for the girl's death, and although Jeffcoat had a "long and storied record of violence" including a felony conviction in 2004, because of a plea agreement and sentencing requirements, the mother's sentence had to be harsher than his.
In court Friday, Kennedy said that this was one of the most egregious homicides imaginable.
"It simply does not get much worse than that," the prosecutor told the judge.
Deddeh noted that a defense expert said, "you're joking," when the circumstances of the child's death were explained to him. The judge said the actions of the defendants were "awful, uncaring and insensitive."
"No one could have written a story like this," he said.
Defense attorney Jack Hochman told Deddeh that Jeffcoat's maximum punishment should have been four years and eight months behind bars, but the judge imposed an extra year in prison for a separate assault on the child.
Hochman said the case will be appealed because Deddeh had no legal authority to make a factual finding that Jeffcoat assaulted the child on a separate occasion.
