AVA HANNAH - 16 Months (2008) - Nashville TN

Three years to the day — and nearly the minute — that 16-month-old
Ava Hannah was found dead in a playpen, prosecutor Brian Holmgren stood
in front of a Nashville jury and called the girl’s mother a murderer.As
Jennifer Elizabeth Hannah watched from the defense table and wept,
Holmgren vigorously introduced the state’s case against her. He vowed to
prove that Hannah gave her youngest daughter prescription drugs and put
her down for “a nap from which little Ava never woke up.”With a
quieter, more restrained approach, defense attorney Patrick McNally told
the jury that his client “did not poison her own baby.” He described a
dysfunctional and “chaotic” household where the sequence of events on
June 27, 2008, can’t be as easily determined as Holmgren would have the
jury believe.The attorneys delivered their opening arguments
Monday afternoon after a lengthy jury selection. Jennifer Hannah, 33,
faces charges of aggravated child neglect, giving controlled substances
to a child and first-degree felony murder. The trial resumes today in
Davidson County Criminal Court.Comments analyzed


First responders with the Nashville Fire Department were some of the
first witnesses in the case Monday. They described Ava Hannah as “blue”
and “lifeless and limp” when they arrived on the scene.“Little
Ava had been dead for some period of time before that 911 call was ever
placed,” Holmgren, chief of the Davidson County District Attorney
General’s child abuse unit, said in his opening argument. “There was no
hope she would survive whatever took place.”An autopsy found the
painkiller oxycodone and the anxiety medication Xanax in Ava Hannah’s
system. A medical examiner ruled the death an overdose — and a homicide.
Traces of oxycodone were found in Ava’s cup, which Jennifer Hannah told
investigators she had given her daughter. Holmgren hammered on that
point, but McNally said his client’s admission that she gave Ava the cup
shows she wasn’t trying to hide anything.“Jennifer Hannah has always said she gave her the milk in the sippy cup,” McNally said. “She didn’t go hide the milk.”He
similarly dismissed Holmgren’s argument that Jennifer Hannah made
suspicious statements — including raising the possibility that Ava had
been drugged. Driven by shame, remorse, grief and fear, Jennifer Hannah
said a lot of things, McNally said.“She said, yes, ‘What if there’s drugs in her system?’ ” he said. “She’s asking what happened to her baby.”Jennifer
Hannah was arrested in December 2008, six months after Ava’s death. She
has remained free on a $100,000 bond. Her husband and Ava’s father,
Michael Hannah, fatally shot himself the following year.Ava Hannah was one of 55 Tennessee children who died from abuse or neglect in 2008, according to United States Department of Health and Human Services data. That figure was a 25 percent increase from 2007 and alarmed state officials because such deaths were falling nationwide.The
number of child fatalities from abuse and neglect improved in Tennessee
in 2009 — the latest year for which figures are available — falling to
46. But the state’s rate of such deaths, 3.08 per 100,000 children,
remains well above the national rate.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110628/NEWS/306280049/Mother-s-trial-in-toddler-overdose-begins

Mother found guilty in toddler's overdose death, gets life sentence
Jury finds Jennifer Elizabeth Hannah, 33, gave drugs to her daughter
3:16 AM, Jul. 1, 2011
A Davidson County jury convicted a Nashville mother of killing her 16-month-old daughter by giving her prescription drugs in 2008.

Jurors deliberated for about three hours Thursday before convicting Jennifer Elizabeth Hannah, 33, of felony first-degree murder, four counts of aggravated child neglect and two counts of giving a controlled substance to a minor.

The murder conviction netted an automatic life sentence and Hannah was taken into custody. She cried as the verdict was read.

Earlier in the day, the mother testified that she did not know who gave her daughter, Ava Hannah, the fatal combination of drugs.

Prosecutors say the evidence shows not only that she did it, but that it could not have been anyone else.

“If I had killed my daughter, God strike me down, I would have killed myself,” Hannah told the jury. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

While she was able to emphatically, if erratically, deny the allegations against her, she also opened herself to cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney General Brian Holmgren, who pressed her on her changing story over the past three years and forced her to acknowledge that she was addicted to medications and used multiple surnames with doctors to get prescriptions.

Michael Hannah found his daughter lifeless in her playpen at the family’s South Nashville home on the afternoon of June 27, 2008, after being away from the home most of the day.

The only other person in the home that day was Jennifer Hannah’s older daughter and Ava’s half-sister, Ana Buchanan.

“We know from the timeline that Mrs. Hannah is the only one who could give these drugs to Ava,” the prosecutor said during closing arguments.

An autopsy revealed Ava died of an acute overdose of the potent painkiller oxycodone and the anxiety medication Xanax.

Oxycodone was found in the sippy cup of milk Jennifer Hannah prepared for Ava on the day of her death. Prescription bottles for both drugs belonging to both Michael and Jennifer Hannah were found in their home.

Defense attorney Patrick McNally was not able to limit his client to answer his direct questions, and Jennifer Hannah provided a wandering testimony — at one point she addressed members of Michael Hannah’s family in the audience and apologized for things that were said over the course of the trial.

Her defense was largely focused on raising suspicions about Michael Hannah and his own involvement with drugs. Michael Hannah committed suicide in September 2009.

After the trial, Michael Hannah’s father, Tommy Hannah, said the jury made the right decision.

“I don’t take pleasure in this. I’m just glad justice was done,” Tommy Hannah said.

After the verdict, the prosecutor said he was not surprised the mother testified because she had tried to talk her way out of it before. “The family has gone through a lot so we’re glad to see (the jury) put an end to it,’’ Holmgren said.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110701/NEWS/307010066/Mother-found-guilty-in-toddler-s-overdose-death-gets-life-sentence