Pictured are Sierra Day and Deonte Lewis (mom and boyfriend), and 4-year-old greater Cleveland victim Aniya Day- Garrett and her father, Mickhal Garrett, who fought for justice in his father's death
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CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-A three-judge panel of the Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the convictions in the brutal murder in 2018 of four-year-old Aniya Day-Garrett of Euclid.
The child's mother, Sierra Day, and the mother's boyfriend, Deonte Lewis both were convicted last year of aggravated murder in her death, as well as on charges of felonious assault, permitting child abuse, endangering children and tampering with evidence.
Common Pleas Judge Timothy McCorrmick handed each of them a life sentence.
In refusing to overturn their convictions, appeals court Judges Eileen T. Gallagher, Frank Celebrezze and Michelle Sheehan, via a decision released Thursday, rejected arguments by the couple's separate lawyers that they should have had separate trials and that there was not enough evidence to support their convictions.
Neither Sierra Day, then 24, the dead girl's mother, nor Lewis, 27 at the time and the mother's boyfriend, took the stand during the five-day trial. Their attorneys argued at trial that there was no direct evidence that links their clients to the crime and that neither delivered the alleged blow that allegedly killed the innocent Black child.
Prosecutors relied primarily on testimony from first responders, including police. Cuyahoga County Job and Family Services social worker Lorra Greene testified and said Day was a good mother at first, but lost her way after she began dating Lewis.Aniya died at an area hospital on May 11, 2018 following a stroke, the county medical examiner ruled, and after police were summoned to her mother's home at Cultural Garden Apartments on Lake Shore Boulevard in suburban Euclid, Ohio for a report of an unresponsive child.
Euclid is a middle class Cleveland suburb, but Aniya's family was poor.
The boyfriend lived there too with the mother, prosecutors said at trial, his attorneys saying otherwise, and his family saying the same thing, and that Lewis really was not the culprit in Aniya's death.
They say he was, instead, an onlooker to Day's aggressive mothering, and child abuse and murder
A jury disagreed, saying that both Lewis and Aniya's mother were at fought in her murder
The tragic case is now headed to Ohio Supreme Court, the defendants' families and their lawyers saying the legal process was flawed, and that they did not get a fair trial.
The events leading up to Anyia's death are troubling, prosecutors said.The child was not breathing and had marks on her feet and legs, trial court records reveal. Led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, Black on Black Crime Inc and the Inner City Republican Movement of Cleveland, activists immediately began protesting.
The dead girl's father Mickhal Garrett, testified at trial and told the jury he filed a complaint with Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services when he allegedly saw signs of abuse and that he also filed a report with East Cleveland police, but nothing substantive was done, he said.
Still, he said, Jobs and Family Services kept Aniya in the custody of her mother, and even after he sought and was denied custody. Cuyahoga County Council settled a lawsuit with the child's father for $3 million earlier this year.
In addition to the county, Aniya's father's lawsuit, filed in April of 2019, also names two Euclid daycare centers as defendants, among others, the daycare centers officials accused of neglect and of ignoring signs and claims of abuse, which the daycare centers have denied.The lawsuit alleges that Anayia was killed partly in response to neglect and malfeasance by county officials and Job and Family Services, and this occurred, says the suit, in spite of the fact that she was under the eyeful watch of Job and Family Services following claims of child abuse reported against the mother and boyfriend.
At the time of Aniya's death, public records revealed that since 2015 more than 44 kids that have come through the office of child and protective services have been murdered and classified as homicide victims. Most of the murder victims were Black and poor like Aniya, data show.
David Merriman, a former special assistant to former county executive Ed FitzGerald and a former deputy chief of staff for Health and Human Services under Cuyahoga County Executive Budish, is the administrator of Job and Family Services for the county. A Democrat and former Beachwood councilman and state representative, and once the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Budish has taken heat behind the little girl's tragic murder.
There have been some improvements or recommendations from Job and Family Services authorities and county officials since Aniya's untimely death in 2018, including recommendations for more social workers and investigators, and a citizen's advisory board of eight to 10 members of the greater Cleveland community.
