Exorcism claim fails, mom guilty of murder

Latisha Lawson still believes she did what God told her to do in November 2009 when she forced her toddler to drink a mixture of vinegar and olive oil.

Even though it killed him. Even though she was convicted of murder and other charges in Jezaih King’s death.

A jury of six men and six women deliberated about five hours Friday before finding Lawson guilty of all the charges prosecutors brought against her.

As Judge Fran Gull read the jury’s verdict, Lawson sat quietly, her eyes looking down at the table. Her attorney asked the judge to poll the jury, and all affirmed the guilty verdicts as their own.

As the jury left the courtroom, Lawson, now standing, sighed deeply with her right hand lightly tapping the table top.

As the bailiff put handcuffs back on Lawson, she looked at her family and friends, who voiced their support for her, telling her they loved her. Lawson cried as she left the courtroom.

Gull set sentencing for late June. She faces at least 45 years in prison.

She was found guilty of murder, battery causing death and neglect of a dependent causing death concerning her son, as well as neglect of a dependent causing injury, neglect of a dependent and battery for allegedly beating and neglecting her 10-year-old daughter.

Lawson’s dramatic, and consistent, testimony wrapped up the evidence in the four-day trial.

Prosecutors argued Lawson deliberately killed the toddler out of frustration with his tantrums and sleepless nights.

But her attorney said she was obviously under the power of some type of delusion, having given herself over completely to a religious fervor that supplanted reality.

Lawson told the jury Friday the oil and vinegar concoction was necessary to drive a demon named “Marzon” from Jezaih’s body. She and her roommate Natasha Hawkins thought their other children were possessed as well, so they too were given the mixture to drink.

All four children vomited it up, but Hawkins and Lawson held onto Jezaih while they exorcised the demon.

Lawson’s words from the witness stand matched what she told Fort Wayne Police detectives in her second interview after they found Jezaih’s decomposing body in a plastic storage tote Lawson was using as a nightstand in a Wabash Street home.

Within a few months in the fall of 2009, Lawson broke up with her boyfriend, moved out of her apartment, moved in with Hawkins and felt strongly her son was possessed by the demon, she said.

All of it was either directed by God or an attempt to get closer to God, she said.

“I was willing to learn. I was wanting to learn,” she said. “I was learning how to learn him.”

She believed she saw the demon Marzon transform her son’s physical shape. She said she believed the toddler was completely overtaken, and the more information God gave her about the demon, the more changes she saw in her baby son.

Lawson said she believed her son became possessed because of how she lived her life when she was pregnant with him.

“I had no love in my heart for life. I had no love in my heart for God,” she said. “He was pretty much grown in hate.”

She said she knew it was the time to exorcise the demons that affected all in their home because God told her so.

“It wasn’t something I planned,” she said.

Lawson prayed, “pleaded the blood of Jesus” to protect the child’s body so when Marzon came out, the baby would be unharmed.

“I knew and believe I was interacting with a demon at that time,” she said.

Lawson told the jury the “process” of the exorcism and giving Jezaih the three doses of the mixture took a few days, and that the child did not pass away immediately.

“It was awhile,” she said. “We just held his body and were praying … and he was passing away.”

After he died, Lawson sought no help and ordered the children not to tell anyone. Instead she and Hawkins put the body on Hawkins’ bed, praying over it, sleeping with it and believing God would bring Jezaih back.

“I went in and just asked God to bring him back,” she said, sobbing. “He did it in the Bible. He did it with Lazarus. He did it with a child in the Bible.”

So great was Lawson’s belief in her son’s soon resurrection, she and Hawkins bought him a small blue hat and a pair of “house shoes” a few months after his death.

Eventually, while Hawkins was staying with her boyfriend, Lawson put Jezaih’s body in the closet, then transferred him to the plastic tote, which she kept with her when she moved from the Hobson Road apartment sometime before Thanksgiving in 2010.

Under cross-examination by Allen County Deputy Prosecutor Thomas Chaille, Lawson acknowledged putting her hand over Jezaih’s mouth, but said she did so gently and without any attempt to harm him.

She was adamant that she did not strangle him, choke him or put her hands near his throat, insisting that the whole process had been to help her son, to deliver him from the demon.

In closing arguments, Bohdan urged the jury to recognize that Lawson’s actions were not that of a sane person, that she was delusional and incapable of understanding right from wrong at the moment of the crime.

“This was not an intent to kill,” Bohdan said, adding that Hawkins’ oldest daughter testified Wednesday that she thought the women were crazy.

“What sane person, two months after the death of their child, goes shopping for clothes for that dead child,” he asked.

But Chaille said that there was no evidence ever presented that Lawson did not understand how wrong her actions were that day.

“Jezaih was an unwanted kid,” he said. “This is a simple child abuse case … She still thinks she did the right thing. Scary.”

 

via Exorcism claim fails mom guilty of murder | The Journal Gazette | Fort Wayne, IN.

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