KYLE SMITH - 3 yo (2008) - New York NY

A heartless housing authority security guard did nothing as his
girlfriend brutally beat to death a 3-year-old child, a prosecutor said
in an emotional opening statement Wednesday.Lemar Martin, 27 -- who "got the ball rolling" when he began disciplining baby Kyle Smith by making him do jumping jacks and push-ups -- was in the room when Nymeen Cheatham began beating the boy from head to toe for not letting her sleep, the prosecutor said."It's hard to sleep when a baby is getting beaten to death in front of him," Assistant District Attorney Cary Fischer
said, his voice choked with emotion. "Did he call 911? No. Did he stop
Nymeen Cheatham from beating the child? No. He does nothing, he's
indifferent.

"Repeatedly calling the 28-pound boy "Baby Kyle,"
Fischer called for jurors to convict the 250-pound Martin of murder for
starting the discipline and doing nothing to stop the June 2, 2008,
attack.Cheatham is now serving 20 years after taking a manslaughter plea.Jurors
are expected to see gruesome photos of the boy, whose injuries Fischer
described in harsh detail: bruises on his back, sides, genitals and
buttocks; bleeding from his mouth, where his tongue was nearly severed;
cracked teeth and broken ribs.Kyle's blood was on the walls and floors of the Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment, on Martin's cue stick and on the sheets and bed covers."It
was a slow and painful death," Fischer said. "It was not a quick death,
as some have suggested. It was a murder that could not have taken
seconds. A murder that nobody could sleep through."Martin's
defense will be focused on Cheatham, who was watching the boy for a
drug-addict friend who left the state, and the fact that Martin was a
heavy sleeper, defense lawyer William Martin said."The
man sleeps the sleep of the dead," said Martin, who is not related to
his client. "Nymeen Cheatham is the party responsible for this tragedy.
… What he died from was the actions of Ms. Cheatham, who went a bit too
far."

An unrepentant Housing Authority security guard who claimed he slept through
the horrific beating of a 3-year-old boy got 18 years to life in prison
Thursday.
That means Lemar Martin, 27, will likely serve more time than
the woman
who actually beat Kyle Smith to death in 2008 while they were caring
for the boy.
"The only crime I'm guilty of is sleeping too hard. I loved Kyle," Martin
said at his sentencing.
"I am innocent of the charges I have been convicted of and will continue to
fight to prove my innocence. May God's will be done."
Martin's girlfriend, Nymeen Cheatham, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in
exchange for a 20-year sentence. He went to trial, was convicted of murder and
got life.
Jurors who saw brutal autopsy pictures couldn't believe Martin actually slept
through the beating.
"The case here is as horrific as any imaginable: A tiny defenseless
3-year-old was beaten to death with wounds and bruises from the tip of his head
to the bottom of his feet," said Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin
Reichbach.
The judge spared Martin the maximum sentence of 25 years to life after noting
he had no record and that Cheatham - whose own four children were taken away
from her in Texas - had a history of mental illness and was
the actual killer.
But he also went above the minimum 15 years to life, noting that Martin's
"Marine boot camp philosophy of child discipline" led to the night of "frenzied
madness."
The couple was watching the boy because his mother, Cheatham's childhood
friend, had fled the state in to kick a drug habit and his father's apartment
was too tiny.
"He trusted you like you said, his guardian angel," Smith's father, Elliot Smith said. "His soul was so precious and
divine. It was never his time to go, not this soon or in this inhumane way.
"There's many questions that will remain unanswered, such as why was he left
to die and how you can deny not hearing his cries for help. What a coward
move."