JOSEPH "JoJo" DeJON MANNING - 18 Months (2008) - Knoxville TN

One look at the battered body of the 18-month-old boy, and a child abuse expert was convinced his death was no accident.


One look at the baby's slightly built mother, and Dr. Mary Palmer
Campbell said Monday she was equally convinced the woman was no killer.

But if Aja McBayne didn't kill her baby, who did? It is a question a
jury in Knox County Criminal Court is being asked this week to answer as
McBayne's one-time lover, Paul Jerome Johnson Jr., stands trial on
felony murder charges in the July 2008 death of Joseph 'Jo-Jo' De'Jon Manning Jr.



'There's no way, (injuries suffered by Joseph) could have been an
accident,' Campbell testified Monday. 'The mother I met would not, in my
judgment, be able to cause those injuries.'

McBayne, 25, once stood accused of felony murder herself, with
Knoxville Police Department Investigator Ryan Flores alleging that she
ignored obvious signs of the baby's abuse. But defense attorney Kelly
Johnson managed, via forensic proof of when those injuries became
visible and results of a polygraph test, to convince both Flores and
prosecutor Steve Sword that McBayne had no clue that her son would wind
up on an autopsy table. Sword last year made the extraordinary move of
dropping charges against McBayne.

McBayne told jurors Monday in Judge Richard Baumgartner's courtroom
that she leaned on Johnson, 26, after losing her job and facing eviction
over her role in a counterfeit cash scheme by Joseph's father.

Johnson seemed sympathetic but soon began to question her parenting skills, insisting she was too soft on Joseph.

On the night of the toddler's death, McBayne said she bathed her son,
noticing no unusual injuries, made him dinner and stroked his braided
hair as he lay his head in her lap on the couch at Johnson's Fern Street home.

'He looked up at me and he said, ‘Night-night, momma,' ' she recalled. 'I said, ‘Night-night, baby,' and we both went to sleep.'

Meanwhile, Johnson, she said, had been angered that she fed the
toddler from her own plate, again criticizing her for 'babying' the toddler.

Later, Johnson woke McBayne to tell her that he was moving Joseph from the couch to the bed, she said.

'I didn't think anything about it,' she said.

Johnson awakened her again with disturbing news, she said.

'He said something was wrong with Joseph,' she testified. 'He wasn't
breathing. I asked what did you do? What happened? He wasn't like this
when you took him from me. … (Johnson) was screaming, ‘Don't let him
die. Don't let him die.' '

Personnel at East Tennessee Children's Hospital would later discover signs that Joseph had been strangled and beaten.

Defense attorney Wesley D. Stone contends that the warning signs of
abuse cropped up a week earlier after Joseph visited with his paternal grandmother.

'You will hear Paul Johnson was not around that child during this time,' Stone told jurors.

Aja McBayne had no seat at the defense table, but a Knox County
jury's verdict Wednesday in the death of her 18-month-old son proved as
much an exoneration of her as it did a conviction of the man on trial.

That's because both sides in the three-day trial of Paul Jerome
Johnson Jr. made it clear in closing arguments Wednesday that Joseph De'Jon
"Jo-Jo" Manning Jr. died at the hands of one of the two.

"There are only two possibilities in the world," Assistant District
Attorney General Steve Sword told jurors of who was responsible for the
beating and strangulation of Joseph in July 2008 inside Johnson's Fern
Street home.

"The proof that she didn't do it is proof he did," defense attorney
Wesley D. Stone agreed. "The proof that he didn't do it is proof she
did. It's 50-50."

In just under two hours, a five-woman, seven-man jury made its
choice, deeming Johnson guilty of felony murder and aggravated child
abuse.

Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner sentenced Johnson, 26, to an
automatic life sentence with possibility of parole in 51 years. He set a
Sept. 9 hearing on whether the Knox County man should garner even more
prison terms for the underlying abuse.

The verdict came after Knox County Chief Medical Examiner
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Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan
told jurors that a hand large enough to fully encircle Joseph's neck
strangled the child for at least a minute. The boy would have lost
consciousness in as little as 15 seconds, she said. Joseph also had been
battered on his back with an unknown object, slapped in the face and
struck in his genital region.

McBayne has said that on the night her son was savaged, she fell
asleep with the boy's head on her lap on Johnson's couch. Johnson, she
testified, later carried Joseph to a rear bedroom while she returned to
sleep on the couch. She said she was later awakened by a frantic Johnson
with her dying son in his hands.

Although McBayne herself was initially charged with felony murder for
allegedly covering for Johnson, forensic proof and a polygraph
examination led Sword and Knoxville Police Department Investigator Ryan
Flores to conclude she knew nothing about the abuse her son had suffered
that night.

Stone, however, took aim at McBayne in Wednesday's closing arguments,
suggesting she was the one who inflicted the fatal injuries on her son.

But Sword countered that McBayne's only crime was turning to Johnson
for help when, after winding up charged in a counterfeit cash scheme
with Joseph's father, she lost her job and means of transportation and
faced eviction.

"(Johnson) was in a bad mood," Sword said of the night of the fatal
attack. "(McBayne) didn't fix him a plate (of food). He gets upset
because she squeezed in between (Johnson and Joseph). The next thing is
the big thing that always gets in his craw - she feeds (Joseph) off her
plate."

Sword has insisted that Johnson regularly belittled McBayne's
parenting skills, insisting she was too soft on Joseph and his older
brother, who was staying with his grandmother on the night Joseph was
attacked.