ZANE JEREMIAH PENNINGTON - 19 Months - Parsons (SE corner of the state) KS

Updated March 25, 2011 at 5:45 PM CST: We have verified that a man charged
in the death of a 19 month old in Parsons is a previously convicted sex offender.
Mark Baker, 25 of Parsons, has been charged
with a number of crimes including felony murder, abuse of a child and aggravated sodomy.
According to the Texas Public Sex Offender Registery Baker was convicted in 2001 of
aggravated sexual assault of two girls, a seven year old and a nine year old.

Updated March 25, 2011 at 4:45 PM CST:
Authorities have charged Mark Baker, 25 of Parsons, with a number of
crimes including felony murder, abuse of a child and aggravated sodomy.
A 19 month old boy was found unresponsive at a home in Parsons
and taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The 19 month old is the third toddler in the past two months to have died in the Four State area.
Parsons Police Chief John Keele says these cases are especially difficult.
"It doesn't make me feel very good at all,"
says Chief Keele. "I don't think it would make anyone feel very good.
Like I said, it is a serious crime."
D.J. Yates, 23, is accused of killing his one year old son Quinton in February.
Donevan Harris, 23, is accused of killing his girlfriend's daughter earlier this month.
The incidents involving Yates and Harris both occurred in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.
According to the Department of Justice male caretakers
are responsible for a disproportionate number of child abuse deaths.

Posted March 25, 2011 at 12:22 PM CST:
Authorities responded to a 911 call in Parsons, Kansas on Tuesday
afternoon. Upon arrival to the home at 1203 Clark officers found a 19
month old boy unresponsive.
He was transported to Labette Health where he was pronounced dead.
His body has been taken to Topeka for an autopsy.
Mark Baker, 25 of Parsons, has been arrested in connection with the death of the toddler.
According to the Labette County prosecutor he
is charging Baker with felony murder, abuse of a child, aggravated
criminal sodomy, obstruction of official duty and felony possession of marijuana.

Police say the investigation is ongoing.http://www.koamtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14322042

R.I.P sweet angel Zane Jeremiah "Booboo" Pennington ♥
19 months,
passed away Wednesday March 23, 2011. Zane was born Aug. 20, 2009

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=189479304432046&set=a.189479161098727.45710.110955438951100&type=1&theater

Court upholds sentences in child-abuse murder
2011 Labette Co. killing stirred questions on Kan. offender registry

Posted: May 31, 2013 - 12:09pm

By The Capital-Journal
The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday upheld the four consecutive sentences — one of them life without the possibility of parole for 20 years — imposed on a Labette County man convicted of felony murder in the child abuse death of a 19-month-old Parsons toddler.

The 2011 murder case involving Mark Anthony Baker was controversial in that he was a registered sex offender in Texas who wasn’t required to register in Kansas upon returning to Parsons in 2010. Baker had been convicted 10 years earlier in Kansas, when he was a juvenile, of two sex crimes involving children.

Joe Pennington, the paternal grandfather of 19-month-old Zane Pennington, said the family knew nothing of Baker’s background when he began a relationship with the child’s mother. Had they known of Baker’s background, they wouldn’t have allowed the then-25-year-old old access to the child, Pennington told the Wichita Eagle in 2011.

Rules governing the Kansas registry of sexual offenders have changed since the time of Baker’s first conviction as a juvenile in 2001. People convicted of sexual offenses as a juvenile now are required to be included on the registry. The required registration of a juvenile offender was an issue left to the discretion of judges at the time of Baker’s juvenile convictions.

Baker initially was charged with murder and sodomy in the March 2011 death of the child, who sustained head and other injuries that resulted in his death. Baker pleaded guilty in July 2011 to felony murder, child abuse, obstruction of official duty and possession of marijuana.

Baker requested concurrent sentences, but the district court invoked consecutive sentences: a “Hard 20” life sentence for murder, 128 months for child abuse and 19 months total for the remaining two charges.

Baker argued on appeal that the district court abused its discretion in imposing consecutive sentences, saying no reasonable person would agree with the lower court decision. A unanimous decision issued Friday and authored by Justice Marla Luckert rejected his argument.

http://cjonline.com/news/2013-05-31/court-upholds-sentences-child-abuse-murder