Hawthorne Man Gets Life Sentence In Child's Beating Death
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Southern California man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for beating his 2-year-old stepdaughter to death in September of 2007.
Thirty-year-old James Vernon Ward IV of Hawthorne was sentenced Monday after the girl's father, Robert Smoot Jr., said the child's death left him broken.
City News Service says Smoot told Ward he hoped the girl would haunt him every night.
Prosecutors said Kayla Smoot suffered a lacerated liver, kidney and pancreas, rib fractures and bruising to the spinal cord when she was killed in an act of rage.
Ward was convicted of first-degree murder, child abuse causing death and child abuse. There was also a special circumstance allegation of murder during a forcible act of sexual penetration.
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