Lawsuit: Arizona CPS, Glendale Police Department and State of Arizona-Missing Child UPDATED

Jhessye Shockley’s grandmother, Shirley Johnson, wanted to adopt Jhessye. Jhessye’s mother, Jerice Hunter, had been convicted of child abuse and served 4 years in a California prison. After being released in 2010,  Arizona CPS allowed Jerice to take custody of Jhessye from Shirley. On a day in October 2011 when Shirley Johnson was in Maricopa County Superior Court for a custody hearing, Jerice reported Jhessye  as missing. Jhessye’s body has never been found.

“A $3 million notice of claim was filed this week against the state of Arizona, Child Protective Service and the Glendale Police Department, alleging their “gross” negligence led to the “wrongful” death of 5-year-old Jhessye Shockley.
Attorney Dwane Cates filed the claim – the first step toward a lawsuit – on behalf of the Glendale girl’s future estate represented by three family members who helped raise Jhessye for the first four years of her life.
Glendale Police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said the department doesn’t comment on litigation matters. Officials from the state and CPS did not immediately respond. ”

“Cate’s clients are Tycora Cole, Mahogany Hightower and Ida Vance, who are Jhessey’s family members.
Cates said his clients were reluctant to hand the girl over to her mother but was forced to by police.
Cates said his clients soon suspected Hunter was mistreating Jhessye and called Glendale Police to report the abuse, including when Jhessye had her two bottom teeth knocked out in April 2011.
Cates said in the claim the police never investigated, never conducted a child welfare check and turned the information over to CPS.
“The Glendale Police Department literally took no further action until Jhessye went missing,” Cates said in the claim.
He said his clients also contacted CPS several times to report abuse, which conducted interviews but closed the investigation, leaving Jhessey with her mother.
Cates said CPS and Glendale Police both had access to Hunter’s child abuse records in California and could have done more but instead “simply closed the case.”
“Had the Glendale Police Department and Child Protective Service done their jobs, Jhessye would be alive today,” the claim said. “The inaction by Child Protective Service, Glendale Police Department and the State of Arizona amounts to willful and wanton conduct on the part of all the parties involved.”
Cates said in the claim that if the case goes to trial, he is confident a jury would award a $10 million judgment for damages.
“How do you determine what the life of a child is worth?” Cates said. “How do we put an amount on her never getting married, never having children and having lived a short abusive life after being given to her mother. Jhessye would have had all these possible things if all parties involved would have not been so grossly negligent.””

Notice of claim filed in Glendale girl’s ‘wrongful’ death

[The Arizona Republic 3/6/13 by Cecilia Chan and Kim Covington]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“Jerice Hunter, the Glendale mother convicted of killing her 5-year-old daughter, Jhessye Shockley, has been sentenced to life in prison. The girl’s body has never been found, but police believe her body was stuffed in a suitcase and left in a Tempe garbage bin.

The sentencing marks the conclusion of a case that began in October 2011, when Hunter told police that Shockley had disappeared from her Glendale apartment. She did not react when Judge Rosa Mroz read the sentence Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

During the trial, prosecutors had portrayed Hunter as a liar and manipulator who, after serving a prison sentence in California, used law enforcement to take Jhessye from loving relatives. They argued that Hunter never developed a maternal bond with the girl described by her teacher as “bubbly” and an “emerging leader.”

While prosecutors Jeannette Gallagher and Blaine Gadow said it could not be determined how or when Hunter killed Jhessye, they told jurors she put the girl’s body in a suitcase and then conned a neighbor into driving her to Tempe so she could sell items Hunter had claimed were inside.

The state won convictions of child abuse and first-degree murder against Hunter despite the lack of an eyewitness to Jhessye’s killing or the discovery of the girl’s body.

Prosecutors presented jurors with evidence that contradicted defense attorney Candice Shoemaker’s portrayal of Hunter as a desperate mother whose years of incarceration while awaiting trial had prevented her from working on what was most important: finding Jhessye.

Hunter’s daughter and Hunter’s ex-lover testified about Hunter’s corporal punishment of Jhessye. The daughter lashed out from the witness stand at the people she believed tore her family apart—police, prosecutors and a state agency that separated her from her siblings—but also described Jhessye being forced by Hunter to live in a closet.

The ex-lover told the court about hearing Hunter beat the child over spilled Play Doh.

The state appeared to be veering into minutiae when it painstakingly laid out Hunter’s numerous excuses for Jhessye missing more than two weeks of kindergarten before the girl’s disappearance. But those became key details when one of Hunter’s relatives testified that Hunter had asked him to drive Jhessye to school on one of the days Hunter told school officials that the girl would be absent from school because of ringworm and pink eye.

Hunter’s request became more significant when the relative told jurors that the girl he drove to school wasn’t the one whose picture flashed across television screens as part of a missing-person search that went national.

The defense called just two witnesses and took just one day to present Hunter’s case.

The first witness struggled to recall details and was seen as ineffective.

The second, a grandmother, presented herself as having a photographic memory. The woman described in detail having seen a girl she identified as Jhessye just hours before Hunter reported the girl missing.

The woman testified that she went outside her apartment, near 45th and Glendale avenues, to smoke a cigarette, saw Jhessye and tried to help her. But the girl was upset, had been crying and fled toward the intersection where the woman told jurors she saw her get into the passenger seat of a dark sedan that sped away, the witness said.

Hunter’s family speaks on sentencing

While the woman’s testimony validated Hunter’s story that she’d discovered Jhessye missing after returning from an errand on Oct. 11, 2011, it didn’t contradict Jhessye’s sister’s statements about seeing Jhessye bruised, unable to walk and losing her hair while locked in her mother’s closet.

Nor was the defense able to explain the large blood stain detectives discovered underneath the closet’s carpet, a stain forensic examiners determined was likely Jhessye’s blood.

The jury of seven men and five women reached the guilty verdicts in late April. Hunter has maintained her innocence since Glendale police identified her as a suspect about a month after Jhessye disappeared.

The jury also decided Hunter had committed fraud against the community when she pleaded for help in bringing her daughter home.”

Jerice Hunter sentenced to life in prison in Jhessye Shockley’s murder

[Arizona Central 7/17/15 by Matthew Casey]