After nearly nine hours of deliberation Friday, jurors convicted a 26-year-old Matteson man of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated battery in the fatal beating of an 8-month-old child.
Jurors opted for the lesser charge despite the state’s efforts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Andrew Driver, the boyfriend of the child’s mother, had intentionally beaten the infant boy on two occasions.
The verdict ended a weeklong trial during which the defense portrayed the mother, 20-year-old Yvonne Mighty, as the killer. Mighty, who was also charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery to a child, faces a separate trial later this year.
A sentencing date is expected to be set in the next 2 1/2 weeks.
It was on Dec. 13, 1992, when Shahon Mighty was rushed to Columbia Olympia Fields Osteopathic Hospital and Medical Center with massive head and internal injuries. He died an hour later from what was described by officials as “multiple injuries, blunt trauma, child abuse.”
The family had been monitored by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services since October 1992, when Shahon was admitted to Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn for treatment of skull fractures. When he was sent home a month later, there was a condition that his grandmother hire a caretaker for him.
What appeared to be the most damaging evidence against Driver was the statement prosecutors said he gave to police in which he admitted striking the child twice on the day Shahon died.
In closing arguments before Associate Judge John Wasilewski in Cook County Circuit Court in Markham, co-prosecutor Chuck Brinkman said Driver had a motive to kill the baby.
“Shahon Mighty was getting some of the attention (Driver) thought he should have,” Brinkman said. Driver occasionally stayed with Yvonne, her mother and her younger sister in their Matteson home.
“During the month of time the baby was hospitalized, (Driver) had his room back. Does it last? The baby comes home from the hospital and there’s a caregiver there who took his room,” Brinkman said. “In his mind, Shahon is once again taking away the attention he thinks he deserves.”
The child was injured only when Driver was alone with him, Brinkman said. “In the two times that Shahon Mighty was taken to emergency rooms at different hospitals, the defendant is either alone with Shahon Mighty or admits to beating him.”
But defense attorney Herb Abrams insisted to the jury: “It couldn’t have been Andrew Driver. The fingerprint of who killed this child is in the statement (he gave police). Andrew, not even knowing it, told you who killed this baby.”
Abrams asked jurors to focus on Driver’s comments about what Yvonne Mighty did the day her son died.
“I heard the baby cry hard,” Abrams quoted his client as telling police. “I heard it cry and then I heard a muffle. . . . He was crying for about five minutes. Then I heard a muffled sound. Then I fell asleep.”
Abrams paused and asked the jurors, “Could Yvonne have done something to the baby?”
Abrams said his client hit the child after the infant pulled at a scab on his chest and hurt him.
Abrams recounted how a number of witnesses, including a nurse and social worker, testified that Yvonne Mighty was a cold and distant mother and suggested Shahon died because of “systematic child abuse by the mother.”
But co-prosecutor Al Lynn countered that the baby was doing fine until July 1992, when his 17-year-old mother met Driver.
“Yvonne didn’t nurture her son, she didn’t respond appropriately,” Lynn said. “These are things she didn’t do. And she didn’t stop this guy from beating her son to death.”
