Court CASES: 1992-1995

While the events of the case took place in Carroll County, Judge William F. Lee, Jr. and attorneys for both sides agreed to move both Christina and David’s trials to neighboring Floyd County. Judge Lee agreed that a Carroll County jury likely would not be able to decide these cases in an unbiased manner. The story of child abuse allegedly at the hands of a young mother from out of town with a troubled, possibly paranormal, past, had whipped local media into a frenzy. 

Residents wrote letter after letter to local papers, calling for punishment. Despite widespread knowledge that Amber was found dead in his care, one writer explicitly defended Carrollton local David Herrin as having a “gentle” nature. Though many expressed a belief that both parties were involved in Amber’s death, Christina’s knotty past in Ohio—her alleged telekinesis, her abusive husbands—arose appeared to factor into public views that Christina was particularly culpable.

Christina was arrested immediately after Amber’s death in April 1992. A year passed. By September 1993, she had not yet been arraigned and had heard mention of neither bail nor bond hearing.

Three public defenders were assigned to Christina’s case during that time, all of whom presented conflicts of interest meriting reassignment. None of them met with Christina to discuss a defense strategy.

She remembers that period as a confusing blur, one in which reality clashed with her expectations of justice. “You don’t even have a lawyer to help you. You think – ‘How am I supposed to get out of here?’ I thought I was supposed to have bail. And I was young, I didn’t know anything about the law anyway.” Christina was also heavily medicated throughout the pre-trial period, which included during her hearings as well as her plea and sentencing. As discussed in further detail in the next chapter, the medications administered by the county jail likely impaired Christina’s ability to think and remember things clearly.

Eventually, in late 1992,Carroll County assigned a private attorney named James “Jimmy” Dodd Berry to Christina’s case. In small, rural jurisdictions where the need for public defenders far outstrips the number of attorneys available, county courthouses sometimes pay local private attorneys to represent indigent defendants.

At the time, Berry had 88 other cases which he presented to Judge Lee as potential scheduling conflicts. Chief amongst them was the Fred Tokars case, in which a Cobb County attorney hired two men to shoot his wife in front of their two sons. The trial – and Berry’s role in saving Tokars from the electric chair – attracted national news coverage and required significant funding from the county taxpayers.

On December 20th, 1993, Christina and Berry appeared in court for her arraignment hearing. At that point, Christina had spent a year and eight months in county jail, wherein the news of the “psychokinetic killer mom” had spread quickly. Child abuse, alleged or not, came with its own set of extra-judicial punishments; Christina was attacked often by fellow inmates and forced to defend herself against constant physical and verbal attacks. Even in jail, Christina wrote, she was viewed as an “outsider,” based on where she was from and what they believed she had done. 

In December 1993, Christina’s trial was scheduled for February 1994. Then it was pushed back to October 1994. Berry had never lost a defendant to the electric chair; Christina was aware that Berry was supposed to be one of the “best defense attorneys in Georgia,” but they rarely met beyond the brief moments prior to pre-trial hearings. He was supposed to send her copies of all of the statements made against her, but he never did. He rarely returned her calls or letters. Christina expressed doubt that he was truly doing “all he could” to refute the statements being made against her, but he was all she had.

Years later, we found a copy of Berry’s invoice to the state, documenting hours worked on her case, and sent it to Christina. Berry spent 108.58 hours in court. He spent 17.25 hours out of court, which included any visits to Christina or external evidence gathering. He never dug into the FCCS reports in Ohio, which we determined were unsubstantiated nearly thirty years later. Christina wrote in letters to friends that she had friends and relatives willing to testify on her behalf. But they never got to testify. 

Christina always suspected that Berry had not dedicated any significant time out of court to preparing her defense. In an interview with us, she said, “[In prison,] nobody really believes you that your lawyer didn’t do any good when you say ‘oh my lawyer didn’t work for me, didn’t do anything for me, wasn’t really working on my behalf.’ Everybody’s like ‘oh yeah right, every criminal says that, you’re in prison and so, you know, you had to do something or you wouldn’t be here.’ . . . The receipt for the 18 hours is really reassuring to me, it validates what I’ve been saying all of these years.”

On September 9th, 1994, Berry, Judge Lee, and D.A. Skandalakis set Christina’s trial to begin on October 31st of that year. On October 23rd, Christina’s friends scraped together the money to pay for a polygraph test, which Christina passed (David refused to take a polygraph test throughout his incarceration or prior to trial). The next day, however, Christina appeared in court with Berry and accepted an Alford Plea. By pleading under Alford v. North Carolina, she formally maintained her innocence but pled guilty to felony murder and aggravated battery. 

Prior to finalizing the plea and sentencing, Berry told the court that he believed that “Ms. Boyer obviously knew or should have known that this child needed to go to the hospital” given the increased bruising that appeared as Amber spent more and more time with David. However, Berry also told the court that Christina passed the polygraph examination and that he “felt that Ms. Boyer was not the one who inflicted the injuries, that David Herrin was.” 

The cases against Christina and David can be summarized as follows: 

THe case against Christina

• The prosecution amassed 42 statements against Christina, which they intended to introduce as “evidence of similar transactions” in trial. Though many of these statements came from “unreliable” sources like Christina’s abusive ex-husband as well as people Christina claimed were strangers, the sheer number of statements felt insurmountable to her defense attorney. Some of these statements alleged cruelty to Amber, some alleged cruelty against James Bennett, many were deemed unsubstantiated either through reporting or witness recanting. However, through our investigation, approximately 19 statements made by 10 individuals came down to Christina’s word against that of the “witness.”

• Police found a belt in Christina’s apartment which roughly matched the size and shape of a bruise on Amber’s face (though the medical examiner testified that a belt could not have caused the trauma that killed Amber, nor were Amber and Christina at Christina’s apartment in the days leading up to Amber’s death).

• Unlike David, Christina was not a lifelong Carrollton resident, and did not have a strong support system to testify to her character or the nature of the abusive situation from which she fled when she left Ohio. While David was described as gentle and a kind, small town dad by his family and neighbors, Christina had two abusive ex-husbands providing manipulative statements to police.

• The medical examiner testified that it was “not impossible” that Amber could have sustained the fatal blow the morning of April 14th – before Christina left Amber alone with David – and died in the afternoon.

Though Berry said he believed Christina had not beat her child, he also believed a jury was going to rule with their gut. Regardless of the timing of Christina’s presence or absence as Amber accumulated bruises, jurors would see the autopsy photos, hear about a young mother fleeing abuse, a “paranormal past,” read the words “Child Protective Services Reports,” and that would be that. And even if they believed David struck the fatal blow, Berry told the judge a jury “would hold her certainly responsible in many ways for the death of the child and certainly under the count as to cruelty in not taking the child to the Doctor when in fact the child needed to have been taken.”

Berry specialized in death penalty cases. His job was to keep Christina from dying. By pleading under Alford, Christina avoided the death penalty. The court asked if her plea was voluntarily given – Christina said it was. In a dissenting opinion in Alford, Justice William Brennan disagreed with the Supreme Court’s majority opinion that any plea accepted under Alford could truly be considered voluntary – given the “fear of death” that all death penalty- eligible defendants confront, all pleas under Alford must include some element of coercion in his opinion.

In addition to her fear of the electric chair, Christina remembers being confused about parole eligibility. Berry hammered home that in accepting the plea, she would be eligible for parole after seven years time served. She would be able to take community college classes from prison, and once she got out, she could start a new life. A life sentence didn’t have to mean life. Christina had served three years at that point; she thought all she would have to do was serve another four and then she could begin to heal from this traumatic experience. 

She told us later she didn’t know that the death penalty didn’t necessarily mean death, at least not immediately. In an interview with us, she said, “I never would have taken this plea if I had known somebody to tell me what was what. I would [have known] that I would have chances for appeals and more court cases . . . had I gone to [trial rather] then taking this plea. I never would have taken this plea.”

On October 21st, she wrote to her friends, “It isn’t easy knowing I’m signing away my life for the next 4 plus years. I’m going to college while I’m there [prison] and make the most of my time . . . At least when I come out I’ll have an education behind me and I’ll be able to support myself. Please, if you can, come to court with me . . . Please stand by me and don’t forget me.” 

In court, Berry told the judge “Ms. Boyer has made a request that we do this in chambers, Judge, due to the number of people and some of the people that she has been dealing with during this time frame are somewhat adamant about what they feel like she should do. She feels as though it would be in her best interest to do it in the closed courtroom.” Christina recalled it differently: “Anyone who would keep me from taking that plea, he kept them away from me.” 

Christina was alone with Berry when she accepted the plea. She remembers Berry telling her that her friends, who wanted to talk her out of taking the plea, “were going to try to get me killed. They were going to get me killed if I didn’t listen to him.” Christina’s counselor, Jeannie Lagle, remembers not being able to see Christina before she took the plea. She remembers Berry calling her and saying that if Lagle convinced Christina to reject the plea, Lagle was “sending her friend to the electric chair.” After sentencing, Lagle encountered Berry in the parking lot, who defended his strategy by allegedly saying, “Christina was a bad mother, and they had all this evidence that [Christina] just wasn’t a good person anyway.”

On October 23rd, 1994, Christina Boyer turned 25 years old. The next day, she was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years. 

David Herrin’s case went to trial in the spring of 1995. Christina agreed to testify to her version of events. On cross examination, David’s defense attorney mocked Christina’s allegedly “paranormal” past and attempted to lay all the blame on Christina for abusing Amber. Six witnesses, including David, testified that they had at some point seen Christina slap or drag Amber by the hair.  While Christina fully admitted that she had not been a perfect mother – that she had spanked Amber, that she often “cussed,” and that she had brought Amber to the home of Jim Sacandy, a neighbor with whom she had once slept because she was short on money for food and rent – she denied the statements made by the witnesses wholeheartedly. She said she never hit Amber with a belt, never beat Amber in the head, never hit Amber with a closed fist. If she spanked Amber, she spanked the back of her legs below her underpants. 

In addition to character evidence, David’s trial also introduced crucial medical evidence into the timeline to which both David and Christina agreed. When asked if “[the lethal injury to the brain could have occurred] as far back as the Friday (April 10th) before Tuesday (April 14th),” the medical examiner who performed Amber’s autopsy responded, “I doubt it. I really don’t think so because Amber didn’t “really have a lot of [brain swelling]” which typically “reaches a maximum 48 to 72 hours [after the injury].” 

Amber’s lack of brain swelling as well as her alleged behavioral changes three hours after Christina had left for the day indicated that it was most likely that Amber received the fatal blow while she was alone with David on April 14th. However, the medical examiner also testified that “ . . . it’s not impossible that the injuries were inflicted in the morning and she died in the evening,” allowing some room for Christina to have inflicted the fatal injury.

Ultimately, the jury charged David with cruelty to children for failing to take Amber to the hospital in the days leading up to her death. David was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Detective Mike Thomas said years later that the fact of Christina’s guilty plea, even if under Alford, likely influenced David’s jury: “Personally I think if the jury hadn’t known that she pled guilty to homicide they would have found him guilty . . . if his jury hadn’t known she had pled guilty to murder he would have gotten life.” David was paroled in 2011.

Continue to “Incarceration and Parole”