Yesterday, a verdict was pronounced in a child murder case in Oklahoma, USA, and the verdict immediately caused a huge controversy:
Two-year-old Ryder was killed with a blunt object, and Ryder's mother, Rebecca Hogue, was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and sentenced by a judge to life in prison.
However, Ryder's killer was not his mother, Hogue, but her boyfriend Christopher Trent.
However, under Oklahoma law, as a mother, Hogue has a "protective dereliction of duty" responsibility, and she is guilty of the same crime as the real murderer for "acquiescing in the murder of her child"...
The ins and outs of the case, let's start at the beginning.
On New Year's Day 2020, working as a bartender in a casino, Hogue, who worked twelve-hour shifts, dragged his tired body home.
Saw his two-year-old son, Ryder, lying in bed, seemingly asleep. Lying next to Ryder was her boyfriend, Trent, who also looked asleep.
The exhausted Hogue didn't think much of it, and fell asleep on the bed.
The next morning when she woke up, Hogue turned her head to see her son's face, but suddenly found that her son's face was dead gray, she touched her son's body and found that it was cold, and then reached out to sniffle, and found that her son was actually out of breath!
Hogue was in a hurry and immediately gave his son CPR, but to no avail. I had to pick up my son and drive to the hospital, but I still couldn't save my son, and the two-year-old Ryder was quickly pronounced dead by the hospital...
Hogue was grief-stricken, and only then did she think of her boyfriend Trent, remembering that when she woke up in the morning, her boyfriend was obviously not in bed, and according to her usual habits, he should have gone to work.
So Hogue called her boyfriend and asked him to rush to the hospital, but found that the phone had not been answered, no one had replied to the message, and suddenly the world evaporated.
Hogue began to realize that something was wrong and called the police.
The police rushed to the hospital at the first time, took little Ryder's body back to the forensic office for identification, and launched an investigation into Hogue and boyfriend Trent.
On the fourth day of the investigation, the case finally broke through, and the police found the body of her boyfriend Trent on a nearby mountain, and a preliminary identification determined that he had committed suicide.
On a tree near Trent's body, a few words are inscribed:
"Rebecca (Hogue) is innocent!"
These words were identified as being hand-carved by Trent before committing suicide.
Meanwhile, the results of the autopsy of the murdered Ryder, who died of blunt wounds, found a bundle of Ryder's hair in a corner of his home.
Police agents announced the preliminary findings:
Hogue's boyfriend Trent killed two-year-old Ryder before running into the mountains to commit suicide...
The murderer committed suicide, and the case was basically clear.
However, the investigation by the prosecution and the police is not yet over, because, under Oklahoma law, Hogue, the mother of the murdered child, is also very responsible, and the specific amount of responsibility will depend on the results of the investigation.
The key points of the survey are:
Did Hogue take care of his son knowing that he had been abused by his boyfriend Trent, which eventually led to the murder of Ryder?!
If Hogue knows everything, then the problem is serious...
Because Oklahoma law clearly states:
Parents' dereliction of duty to protect their children leads to abuse of their children, and parents share the guilt of the abuser!
That is, if Hogue learns that her boyfriend has abused her son, she will be charged with murder by the prosecution!
In this way, the police once again opened an investigation into Hogue.
Hogue made it clear that she really didn't know her boyfriend had abused her son before her son was killed.
She said that in the two weeks before her son's murder, she did notice some minor scars on his body, so she also made a point of reporting the situation to the police, then took pictures of the scars on her son's body and searched for "the child may have been abused" on her mobile phone.
Unsure, Hogue confronts Trent, but her boyfriend Trent just calmly tells her that the injuries on little Ryder's body are all bumped and scratched by himself, and it is no big deal.
Hogue observed for a while and found that there was no abnormality, so he temporarily reassured his doubts.
However, two days before Ryder's murder, strange things happened again, and when Hogue bathed his son, he found that he had been listless and felt like he had been stimulated by something.
So Hogue confronted her boyfriend Trent again, and Trent still gently told him that the child might have a cold.
So Hogue once again used her mobile phone to search for the symptoms of "child cold", and out of caution, she searched again for "signs that the child may have been abused".
The records of these two searches were found and recorded by the police.
For the second search for "signs that the child may have been abused", Hogue gave the following explanation:
She wasn't sure if her son had been beaten by her boyfriend in private, so she went to search to make sure.
However, after browsing all the content, she finally chose to think of people in the best direction, thinking that the child was just cold and had no energy...
It was these two search records that became evidence of Hogue's conviction...
Hogue was arrested by police and formally heard last fall, with both the prosecution and the defense focused on:
Did Hogue know that her boyfriend abused her son?!
After several court hearings, the court finally found that Hogue twice used her mobile phone to search for "the child may be abused" and other content, indicating that she "knew" that her boyfriend was abusing the child, but still chose to forgive and connive at the other party, and let the other party continue to take care of the child, and finally gave the boyfriend the opportunity to kill his son!
There is therefore ample evidence that Hogue committed the felony of "acquiescing in the murder of his own son".
Yesterday, Hogue was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and a judge sentenced her to life in prison...
According to the feedback from all parties, not only did the verdict cause a huge controversy, but the police and Hogue's lawyers, and some of the people at the scene were quite dissatisfied with the trial process.
Some investigators pointed out that the judge was biased in the trial:
Not only were child abuse experts not summoned to appear in court, but the jury detailed the determination of the abuse, and the lead agent who directly handled the case was barred from appearing.
Even some key evidence, such as:
Trent's photo of the words "Rebecca (Hogue) is innocent" on the tree, the phone call record of the chief agent and a friend of Hogue' – which included the agent's conversation that "Hogue did not know that her boyfriend abused her son", etc., were all banned from appearing in court by the judge...
In addition, not only was the trial process criticized by the media, but also the legal basis for convicting Hogue, which was also considered extremely unreasonable by experts and public opinion.
It turns out that, with the exception of Oklahoma, several U.S. states have similar "derelict protection" laws in force, which were passed twenty years ago.
At the beginning of its passage, it was heavily criticized by experts, many of whom believed that in practice, the law would harm women who were themselves victims of domestic violence.
For example, some women are likely to be afraid to leave their husbands, and they have failed after doing their best to protect their children, but once the children are victimized, the woman will further bear the same murder charge as the perpetrator, which is unfair and absurd.
However, the law is relatively lax in other U.S. states, with parents guilty of "protectional dereliction of duty" punishable by penalties ranging from mandatory counseling to years in prison.
But Oklahoma's such penalties are quite severe, with up to life imprisonment...
Investigation reports show that in a total of 11 states in the United States today, in 28 cases of "protection negligence", the mother has been sentenced to more than ten years in prison.
Hogue has apparently been punished the harshest, and if the case does not turn around, the 29-year-old will spend her life in prison, even if it comes to her first parole, it will be thirty-eight years later.
Her son was killed by her boyfriend, and Hogue, a mother, was sentenced to life in prison.
This made the media and the melon-eating masses shout incomprehensibly, in the words of one reporter:
She may be guilty, but it seems that the sin does not end there...