Not guilty for Stringer, not sure about Gardner, Neshoba jury says after two-week trial
PHILADELPHIA — After a tough two-week trial, the prosecution team was outside the courtroom packing equipment and exhibits, including a poster-size photo of 6-month-old Rosalee Stringer. Inside, defendants and their attorneys were posing for new photos.
Brooke Stringer, 24, was found not guilty in the death of her daughter, and it was a hung jury in the case against her co-defendant and boyfriend Brandon Gardner, 28, so a mistrial was declared. It will be up to the Jones County District Attorney’s Office whether to pursue prosecution of Gardner in a retrial.
Brooke Stringer wipes a tear from her face as attorney Tangi Carter reacts to hearing that the jury found her client not guilty.
A Neshoba County jury — made up of six white men, four white women, one black woman and one Choctaw man — deliberated for more than four hours, into early Friday evening.
Judge Dal Williamson had sent them back to the jury room about two hours earlier after they indicated they were deadlocked in their deliberation. The split at that time was reportedly 8-4 in favor of finding Gardner guilty of manslaughter.
“Please continue a while longer,” the judge said, after repeating instructions to jurors to “not surrender your honest opinion” just for the sake of returning a verdict.
When they came back a couple of hours later, jurors had unanimously decided Stringer was not guilty and they were undecided on Gardner.
There were tears and hugs for both defendants from their attorneys, family members and friends after the announcement.
Capital murder defendant Brandon Gardner gets a hug from attorney Marcus Evans after the trial ended with a hung jury. Co-defendant Brooke Stringer, seated between attorneys Tangi Carter and Jansen Owen.
“We’ll be giving our quote to Mississippi Today,” said Jansen Owen, one of three attorneys for Stringer, when he saw a Leader-Call reporter who had covered the trial in its entirety waiting outside the courtroom. Mississippi Today hasn’t covered any aspect of the case, from the time of Rosalee’s death in October 2019 to Gardner and Stringer being arrested in December 2021 to the trial this month.
Stringer testified in her own defense but Gardner did not take the stand — a decision that jurors were not supposed to hold against him, according to the standard jury instructions the judge read.
Jurors then heard three hours of closing arguments from attorneys on Friday morning and afternoon to wrap up eight days of evidence and testimony, then retired to the jury room just before 2 p.m. on Friday. They returned the final verdict shortly after 6:15.
“You heard from him seven times” in recorded interviews and body-cam statements, Gardner’s attorney Chris Collins said in closing. Collins is a Neshoba County attorney and former judge who joined attorney Marcus Evans of Waynesboro after the defendants were granted a change of venue because of pretrial publicity in Jones County. He encouraged the jurors to listen to those interviews again, and they did listen to at least one.
Gardner and Stringer were charged with capital murder, with felony child abuse as the underlying felony charge, but they could have been convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter or aiding and abetting in the death of Rosalee. They were charged more than two years later after an autopsy report from the state crime lab showed that the cause of Rosalee’s death was blunt-force trauma to the head and the manner of death was homicide. Prosecutors were not seeking the death penalty for the defendants.
Defense attorneys, from left, Lindsay Arvalo, Jansen Owen and Tangi Carter with their client Brooke Stringer and co-defendant Brandon Gardner with one of his attorneys Marcus Evans start lining up to pose for a photo.
Forensic pediatrician Dr. Scott Benton of the University of Mississippi Medical Center determined that the baby died of abusive head trauma, possibly from an “acceleration/deceleration injury” — commonly called “shaken-baby syndrome.” He and Dr. Danielle Blakeney of South Central Regional Medical Center testified that Rosalee’s injuries were too severe to have been caused by bumping her head on a nightstand from floor level, as Gardner said happened while Stringer was in the shower. Two expert witnesses testified on behalf of the defendants to present alternate theories or possible causes, but prosecutors and defense attorneys deemed each of the opposing experts’ opinions as speculative.
Collins used the court’s often cited analogy to distinguish between direct and circumstantial evidence — that seeing it rain is direct evidence and seeing water droplets on the coat and umbrella of someone entering the courtroom is circumstantial evidence that it rained — to make a final point. He said that he placed his sportcoat on the bathroom counter, which set off the sinks’ motion detector and soaked his coat. It was wet, but it hadn’t been raining.
“That’s reasonable doubt,” he said.
Stringer’s attorney Tangi Carter made the same point in her closing just before Collins.
“She was a mother fighting like hell trying to save her daughter,” Carter said of Stringer, referring to 911 calls and early interviews they heard between her client and various officials.
She talked about the grief Stringer has suffered with “every day” and how that’s been compounded by being “wrongly accused of capital murder.”
She continued to talk about the daycare injury Rosalee suffered more than three weeks before the fatal injury and the lack of a full investigation into that incident.
Both incidents were similar, she said, in that the daycare worker heard a noise then heard Rosalee crying before going to check on her — which is the same scenario that Gardner described.
Carter also talked about the co-defendants’ consistent stories and cooperation with investigators, without being accompanied by lawyers, and described that as “like sheep to slaughter.”
She called into question Benton’s findings, saying he has testified in a lot of cases and “affected a lot of lives.” Benton “has an agenda,” she said and called him a “police officer/doctor.”
Carter concluded: “The bottom line is, we don’t know what happened to Rosie. When you don’t know, there’s doubt.”
Prosecutor Kristen challenged the defense’s contention that bruises Rosalee sustained at a daycare more than three weeks earlier didn’t cause the severe head injuries that led to her death.
“Bruises to the face don’t cause a brain bleed,” she said. “The medical evidence is incontrovertible. There’s no other conclusion, ladies and gentleman. Consistency doesn’t equal truth.”
The baby was incapable of creating enough force to cause the fatal injury to her head, Martin said, citing medical and autopsy reports. Both Stringer and Gardner had a few moments alone with the baby in the bedroom on the night the injury happened, she said.
Martin pointed to a statement Stringer made in her interview with Benton hours after Rosalee was airlifted to UMMC. Stringer asked if shaking or “holding her down hard for just a second” would cause injuries like Rosalee sustained. Martin noted the specificity of that statement and said, “I submit she told you right there what happened.”
Shortly after going tothe jury room, jurors sent a question to the judge asking for a “broader definition of manslaughter,” but he referred them to the definition that was included in the jury instructions. It was after that they announced they couldn’t reach a decision before going back and returning with the verdict for Stringer and no decision for Gardner.
The split is often a factor that prosecutors use to decide if they will retry a case.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7rbHAnZyrZZOWua16wqikaKaVrMBwstGenJimlazAcL%2FPpaCtZZSasKq%2FyKilaJmiqbakuMSYmp9wkmyDpISMaZycml1mfqaxjJtsamhdbbOnrphubmpxlZp%2Bb7TTpqM%3D