Mother microwaves her own 28-day-old baby to death after boyfriend questions if he’s the father

An Ohio woman was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for killing her one-month-old daughter by putting her in a microwave oven. China Arnold, 31, from Dayton, was found guilty of murder in the death of 28-day-old Paris Talley in August 2005. Montgomery County Judge Mary Wiseman gave her the sentence after a jury decided she should not get the death penalty.

As per CBS News, prosecutors said that Arnold put her baby daughter in a microwave and turned it on after a fight with her boyfriend, Terrell Talley. The couple had been arguing about whether Talley was really the father of the baby. On the night of August 30, 2005, Arnold and Talley were at a park when he started asking questions about whether Paris was actually his child. He had heard rumors that Arnold had cheated on him. This made Arnold very angry, and they drove home where things got worse.

Doctors who looked at the case said that Paris was probably in the microwave for more than two minutes. Dr. Marcella Fierro, explained how the baby died in very clear terms. “She died because she was overheated,” Fierro said. “She was cooked.” The baby’s body temperature went up to between 107 and 108 degrees. Paris had serious burn injuries inside her body but no burns on the outside, which confused doctors at first when Arnold and Talley brought her to the hospital the next morning.

This wasn’t exactly an open and shut case

The case went to court three different times before Arnold was finally found guilty for good. Her first trial in February 2008 ended without a decision when new witnesses showed up right before the trial was supposed to finish. A young boy said he saw another child put the baby in the microwave. 

Arnold’s second trial in September 2008 ended with her being found guilty and given a life sentence, but the Ohio appeals court threw out that decision in November 2010. The appeals court said the prosecutors did something wrong and that the judge made a mistake by not letting an important witness speak in court.

During the third trial in May 2011, Arnold’s lawyer Jon Paul Rion said that the evidence pointed to Talley just as much as it pointed to Arnold. He said that Arnold was very drunk at the time, having drunk half a bottle of Bacardi 151 rum. “No mother is going to do this, in this way,” Rion told the jury. 

The lawyer also said that when Arnold said “I killed my baby,” she really meant that she felt like she failed as a mother by letting it happen, not that she actually did it. In another shocking case involving family violence, a man killed his entire family and disappeared for 18 years before being caught.

The prosecutor, Dan Brandt, said that what Arnold did was even more planned out than shooting or stabbing someone. He told the jury that Arnold had to pick up the baby, put her in the microwave, close the door, and push the buttons, then wait while her child died. 

Two mental health doctors who checked Arnold before she was sentenced said she did not have any serious mental illness and was just as smart as most people. Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon said that Arnold had some depression problems and used alcohol and drugs, but he could not find anything that would explain why this happened to the child.

Arnold chose not to say anything when she was sentenced. Her lawyer said they would try to appeal the decision. The case stayed in the legal system for many more years, and Arnold’s last attempt to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court was turned down in 2014, which ended her chances of getting the conviction thrown out. Similar to this California mother who killed six children across two separate incidents, Arnold’s case made people ask serious questions about mental health and how the justice system works.