A Madison woman who was accused of child neglect in the drug overdose death of her 11-monthold daughter was acquitted of the crime by a Dane County jury, which found her not guilty Thursday night after deliberating for about 8½ hours.
The jury of six men and six women said Kelsey E. Kindschy, 33, is not guilty of child neglect in which the consequence is death for the July 20, 2021, overdose death of her daughter, Zariah Hawkins, whose body was found to contain many times the amount of fentanyl that it would take to kill an adult. A blood analysis also found a high dose of morphine, the substance formed when the body breaks down heroin.
Zariah died 10 days short of her first birthday.
The verdict brought tears to Kindschy and her family, and Circuit Judge Ellen Berz urged Kindschy after reading the verdict to do all she can to remain sober and free from opiate abuse.
“I cannot tell you how much better you look,” Berz said, “than when this all started. You were a wreck. I hope that the good that has come from this experience will be continued.”
“I’m completely sober,” Kindschy responded.
While prosecutors did not say for certain where or how Zariah had come into contact with the drugs — she could neither walk nor crawl — Assistant District Attorney Tracy McMiller said Kindschy and the girl’s father, Derrick Hawkins, 26, freely used drugs several times a day in the apartment where they lived and in the car they drove to meet their drug dealer, meetings to which they took Zariah along.
“She was a victim of her parents’ drug abuse,” McMiller told the jury in her closing argument earlier Thursday.
Hawkins pleaded guilty last month to child neglect with death as a consequence and faces up to 25 years of combined prison and extended supervision. That’s the penalty Kindschy also could have faced.
Kindschy’s attorney, Zaki Zehawi, argued that Hawkins alone was responsible for Zariah’s death and told the jury he believes Hawkins either intentionally or accidentally injected the contents of a syringe into Zariah’s right hand during an hour when Kindschy was not home.
“I can’t tell you what happened with Derrick at the home,” Zehawi said. “But something did.”
At that time, according to trial testimony, Kindschy was meeting and having sex with the couple’s drug dealer at his home. The man testified on Wednesday that he gave Kindschy some heroin before she left his home but that she did not use it there.
A Madison woman who was accused of child neglect in the drug overdose death of her 11-monthold daughter was acquitted of the crime by a Dane County jury, which found her not guilty Thursday night after deliberating for about 8½ hours.
During testimony by Dane County Chief Medical Examiner Agnieszka Rogalska, Zehawi pressed Rogalska on the origin of a puncture mark on Zariah’s right hand, which was different in size from punctures in her left hand. Rogalska testified that the punctures on the left hand were documented to be from attempted lifesaving measures undertaken at the Meriter Hospital emergency room, but there was no such documentation about the puncture on the right hand.
Rogalska agreed the puncture on the right hand appeared smaller, apparently from a smaller gauge needle than those used on Zariah’s left hand. But she said she could not speculate on its origin.
Zehawi argued that the puncture, along with a used needle that was on the sink in the bathroom of the couple’s apartment — where Hawkins maintained he had been the entire time Kindschy was gone — showed that Hawkins could have used the needle to inject the drugs into Zariah. Zehawi theorized Hawkins did it because Zariah was crying loudly. He said police never collected or tested the needle.
McMiller countered that even if that were so, Kindschy was still guilty of child neglect. McMiller maintained that Kindschy had said during recorded phone calls from the Dane County Jail that she knew Hawkins had a severe addiction and that she should not have left their daughter alone with him.
“She knew he was shooting up,” McMiller said.
Zehawi also argued that Hawkins seemed to show little concern on the night that Zariah died, while Kindschy was in such grief that she continued to work with Madison police for a year after her daughter’s death to find out how she died. Hawkins was found to have been using drugs in his car in the Meriter parking ramp after Zariah was taken to the hospital, he added.
McMiller said it’s possible that Kindschy was both grieving and partly responsible.
“The hard truth of it is that she had a part in what happened to Zariah that night,” McMiller told the jury. “Both can be true.”
