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From
Grand Rapid News:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- In one photo, Taryn Jefferson is a smiling, chubby-cheeked young woman.
In the next photo, taken at a hospital morgue, she is unrecognizable -- looking not like the 21-year-old described as bright and happy despite her severe disability, but more like an unwrapped mummy.
Those photos were among the evidence that convinced a Kent County Circuit Court jury on Feb. 15 to find Taryn's mother, Tammy Jefferson (pictured), guilty of felony murder in the neglect death of her daughter.
Taryn Jefferson -- who was shaken by her father as baby and subsequently could never walk, feed herself, communicate or even roll over -- died last March in the Wyoming home where she, her mother and young brother lived.
Tammy Jefferson will be sentenced to mandatory life in prison by Judge James Robert Redford on March 22.
After the verdict was read around 1:30 p.m., Jefferson put her face in her hands and wept.
It was the first significant emotion she showed during the trial -- which went for five days last week -- even as graphic and horrifying descriptions of her daughter's decline into death were described.
For two decades, Jefferson, 48, cared for Taryn in her home. The young woman attended school, regularly saw doctors, worked on motor skills at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital and was, by all accounts, a bright-eyed, smiling person.
"She was a beautiful girl," said Tammy Jefferson when she testified, smiling as she remembered the child she cared for around-the-clock.
That changed sometime in 2008, when Jefferson started spending inordinate amounts of time on her computer, including hours in chatrooms and calling up an average of 402 Internet pages per day, according to the prosecutor in the case.
Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker accused Jefferson of becoming obsessed with an Internet romance she began with an Ohio woman.
The jury began deliberation on Friday afternoon before going home at 9:30 p.m.
Over the weekend, a juror did online research and was excused from the trial, forcing the newly-reconstituted jury to begin deliberations again around noon today.
An hour-an-a-half later, it had reached a verdict.
Jefferson took the stand last week and said she was in a depressed state and was not always thinking straight. She blamed a change in medicine for her daughter's inability to keep down food. She said food brought home from school made her daughter have diarrhea and vomiting. She said mildew in the damp Goodwin Street SW home made for unhealthy conditions for the whole family.
Jefferson said she broke up with the father of her youngest child, which left her alone to care for Taryn and her son. At the same time, her car failed and her answering machine broke, causing her to miss numerous health care appointments.
She said because she was alone, she could not get both her children to school so she decided to send her son because he was higher-functioning and able to learn.
Becker asked her how she could miss her daughter's weight loss even after it had been mentioned to her by a visiting social worker who advised her to get her daughter to a doctor.
Jefferson said because she saw Taryn every day, the weight loss was less visible to her.
Her attorney, Donald Pebley, said it may have been Taryn's own choice to stop eating, leading to her death.
Several people, including the father of Jefferson's 10-year-old son, described Tammy Jefferson as a terrific mother.
Pebley also blamed social service and health care providers for not stepping in to remove Taryn from the home.
The jury rejected that argument, holding Tammy Jefferson responsible for her daughter's life.
From Grand Rapid News:
