Jackie Rolston suffered a defeat in her quest to appeal her conviction of killing Kirk Coleman, along with her prison sentence.
The former babysitter from New Paris claimed that prosecutors never proved that she injured Coleman, that the court shouldn’t have shown certain photographs, and that the court didn’t consider her character when giving her the 30-year-prison sentence she received.
ABC 57 reports that the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court used discretion in admitting evidence, said Rolston disregarded her prior conviction of neglect of a dependentand noted that Rolston was the only adult present when Kirk Coleman, then just 19-months-old, suffered his fatal injury. They also called Rolston’s prior conviction was “extremely egregious.”
Rolston was convicted of a single count of battery resulting in the death of a child. Initially, she told police in Oct. 2014 that Coleman was choking on his lunch. But Coleman died hours later, and a coroner ruled he died of blunt force injuries.
Rolston was convicted of neglect of a dependent in a previous case. However, Coleman’s family wasn’t informed by Rolston of that at the time. The family has since worked to get Kirk’s Law passed, which requires the creation of a database of people convicted of child abuse. That database must be up and running by July 1, 2017.
2 comments
Sounds like the court did consider her character in their ruling.
If the court had truly considered her “character”, she would have received a life sentence.