Defense: Husband beat child
Felony child abuse trial takes unusual turn Thursday

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — For Cleo Juan’s defense team, it was all a matter Thursday of pinning the blame on someone else.

This tactic continued to play a major role in the testimony that was presented in Juan’s trial; but prosecutors continued to try and convince a jury that Juan was responsible for the death of 18-month-old Colby Shirley, a child that was placed in her care by the state.

Her defense team, Mark and Joe Fine from Albuquerque, even gave the jury a name of a possible other person to mull over when they went into the jury room to deliberate Juan’s fate — Jeff Juan, her husband.

The Fines continued to argue that the head injuries that caused Shirley’s death in March 2006 occurred before Cleo Juan came back to her trailer on March 14 at or about 9:30 a.m., and the name that came up most often during Thursday’s testimony as watching over the toddler while she went to Curves for a workout was her husband.

Juan Reyes, the lead detective for the Gallup Police Department in the Juan investigation, spent more than four hours on the stand, testifying about his 45-50 minute interview with Cleo Juan on March 14 and his subsequent actions in the investigation.

In his cross-examination, Mark Fine asked Reyes if he ever considered the husband as a possible suspect.

Reyes said no, but he was “a person of interest.” What he meant by that, he said, was police believed Jeff Juan could have had information that would prove to be valuable to the investigation.

But when Jeff Juan was asked by police if he was willing to be interviewed, he “lawyered up” and refused to talk to detectives.

In fact, said Reyes, he has to this day refused to talk to police at all about the matter. Reyes said he even made another attempt to get Jeff Juan to talk to him when he saw him at a later hearing. But it was no use. He continued to refuse to talk.

Later in his testimony, Reyes stated that he was told by one of the assistant district attorneys, Bernadine Martin, that Cleo Juan had accused her husband at one time of being responsible for Colby’s death.

This led to the defense team standing up and asking for a sidebar, which resulted in District Judge Grant Foutz asking the jury to leave the room.

After the jury stepped out, the Fines protested, saying their client has never accused her husband of being involved in Colby’s death and after some discussion among the lawyers, Foutz was told that the accusation was a result of miscommunication as something that was said by Fine’s attorneys to Martin and then to Reyes was misconstrued.

Unless this matter is brought up again, this may be all the jury hears about Jeff Juan’s possible involvement since the prosecution rested without calling Jeff Juan to the stand and he’s not listed as a witness for the defense.

While Jeff Juan did not talk to the police, Cleo Juan did and this resulted in much of the evidence that has been presented by the prosecution so far that has been damaging to her.

Reyes said after he conducted a 45-50 minute interview with her — which was video and audio taped — Cleo Juan wrote out a statement and it was in this written statement, he said, that she admitted that she had committed child abuse.

“I have done the most unimaginable thing to an innocent child who trusted me,” she wrote in the statement.

The prosecution is taking this as a confession, but Mark Fine, in his cross-examination of Reyes, posed the possibility that on the day Colby was taken to the trailer and sent to Albuquerque in critical condition, all his client was doing was expressing her guilt for possibly causing Colby’s injuries “when she pulled down his pajamas too hard” causing him to fall back and hit his head on the carpet.

Medical experts called by the prosecution both testified that the level of injuries to Colby could not have been caused by something like this. His injuries were so severe it would have taken a car crash or a two- or three-story fall on his head to cause the head injury. Or he could have been violently shaken.

Medical experts testified that any child with Colby’s head injury would have begun showing immediate signs of abnormally, such as difficulty walking, removing his clothes or eating his breakfast. In Cleo Juan’s statements to police that day, there was no mention of any of these problems.

But Reyes said he did talk to David Smith, who arrived at the trailer at about the same time as Cleo Juan, and who said he noticed that Colby was walking stiffly and had trouble removing his clothes. He also said that Colby did not eat his breakfast that morning.

The prosecution rested its case mid-afternoon and Mark Fine asked Foutz to give a directed verdict of not guilty because the prosecution did not provide any testimony as to how Colby could have received his injuries. Foutz denied this motion but he did agree to dismiss one of the two charges against her, negligent abuse of a child leading to death.

This still leaves her facing a charge of intentional abuse of a child leading to death, and Foutz said the prosecution couldn’t have it both ways — either she intentionally caused his injuries, or it was an accident. He pointed to testimony from the prosecution’s medical experts who said this kind of injury could not be caused accidentally.