A Mississippi dad who pleaded guilty in the hot car death of his daughter will be spared prison after his attorney declared it would be racist to lock him up.
Joshua Blunt, 26, was handed a five-year suspended sentence on Friday after accepting a plea deal with prosecutors that acknowledged that he did not purposefully kill his eight-month-old child Shania Rihanna Caradine.
His daughter passed away in May 2016 after being discovered unconscious in Blunt’s 100F car, where she was left while he was at his restaurant job in Grenada.
Blunt’s lawyer stated that his client, who is African-American, was dealt with more harsh due to of his race and serving any jail time would be racist.
In a extremely similar case, a white mother was not prosecuted in August when her two-year-old died in a hot car, simply a few days before Shania passed away.
Amy Bryant’s daughter Caroline passed away when she was left in an automobile after Bryant forgot to drop her off at daycare before she went to work.
A grand jury in Madison County chose not to charge her, unlike a jury in Grenada County, 100 miles away, who decided to indict Blunt on charges of manslaughter in spite of the surprising case resemblances.
Blunt had forgotten to drop off Shania prior to he headed to work, leaving the child for fours hours inside a 100F car.
When he discovered his child in the automobile, Blunt and a colleague took Shania inside the restaurant and put cool towels on her to wait for an ambulance that took her to the University of Mississippi Medical Center Grenada.
Physicians at the hospital attempted unsuccessfully for hours to revive the child and Blunt was jailed and charged for second-degree murder.
It was later on was reduced to manslaughter after a grand jury indictment, however that still featured a maximum 20 years jail sentence.
The plea agreement Joshua Blunt took suggests five years of supervised probation and he is a convicted felon now. His lawyer, Carlos Moore, will request for gubernatorial pardon after the five years, according to WMBF News.
Moore stated on Friday: “There are no winners here. A kid is dead, Mr. Blunt is a convicted felon, and the state did not get Mr. Blunt behind prison bars as it had so preferred prior to today.”
“I personally am sick and pleased at the same time.”
Blunt’s fiancee and the mom of Shania, Shanice Caradine, is pregnant, and Moore stated Blunt didn’t wish to run the risk of facing a possible 20-year prison sentence by going to trial.
Shanice stated in a sworn court statement in August that she did not think Blunt should be charged in the death of their child: “I truthfully believe that it was a tragic accident.”
