Opening statements given in Delestre trial

The Associated Press
Published: November 19, 2008

PROVIDENCE—A lawyer for a man charged with fatally beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew said Wednesday that his client hit the child hard enough for him to fall backward down a staircase, but did not intend to kill him.

Attorney Robert Mann told jurors in opening statements that Gilbert Delestre, charged with murder in the 2004 death of Thomas “T.J.“ Wright, acknowledges he hit the 32-pound toddler too hard, then tried but failed to catch the boy as he fell down the stairs.

He said Delestre would take responsibility for his role in the child’s death when he testifies in Providence Superior Court.

“He’s going to tell you he’s sorry he struck T.J.,“ Mann said.

Prosecutors say Delestre and girlfriend Katherine Bunnell, the child’s aunt, fatally beat the boy after returning home in the early morning hours of Oct. 30, 2004, and finding a mess on the living room carpet of their Woonsocket apartment.

The boy and his two older brothers were living with the couple while their mother was in prison out of state.

Bunnell, who blamed Delestre for the death, was convicted in May of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Mann asked jurors to show Delestre leniency by acquitting him of murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, and conspiracy to commit murder. He suggested they convict him of manslaughter, which would result in a shorter sentence.

Prosecutor Stacey Veroni said the couple spent the night out at a bar, leaving Wright, his two siblings and their own two children with a 15-year-old baby sitter.

After they returned home to a messy apartment, Delestre went to the children’s bedroom and slapped Wright several times, Veroni said. Bunnell hit the child and dumped a container of milk on his head, that Delestre threw him hard onto the floor.

Wright “died a violent and tortuous death,“ Veroni said.

The couple then misled police by blaming the teenage baby sitter and encouraged the other children to lie as well, Veroni said.

The prosecutor showed jurors pictures of a smiling Wright taken before the beating, followed by photographs of his battered body. He was taken off life support a day after the beating, and died of brain injuries and a skeletal fracture.

The state Department of Children, Youth and Families had been processing the couple’s license as foster parents when the death occurred. A panel report issued a year after Wright’s death concluded that DCYF should never have permitted Wright and his siblings to live with Delestre and Bunnell, who each had juvenile records, and missed opportunities to intervene in the case.