Joseph David Heard used one hand to hold the 2-year-old’s hands over his head. He used the other to repeatedly punch the little boy in the gut and the head, according to the child’s mother.
When little Hayden Lee Bataille cried out in pain, Heard, 41, got angrier, and the beating only escalated, Hayden’s mother and Heard’s wife, Hailey Lynn Bataille Heard, said in testimony this week in Harrison County Circuit Court in Biloxi.
Joseph David Heard was already angry that morning, two days after Christmas 2021, because the toddler with curly blond hair had soiled his diapers overnight.
When Heard felt like the child took too long to get a juice box out of the refrigerator after his bath, the torture began.
Hayden’s cries ended only after his mother said she later walked into the living room of their one-bedroom apartment, where the boy’s stepfather was still beating the child. She testified that she put her hand over her child’s mouth and nose, hoping he would stop crying and the beating would end.
Hayden turned blue and slipped from consciousness. He died of suffocation.
The testimony from the child’s mother, Biloxi police, doctors, and more came out this week in the capital murder trial of Joseph David Heard in his stepson’s death. If convicted of capital murder, he could face a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole or death.
Hailey Heard has already pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of first-degree murder in a plea deal with prosecutors that included a demand that she testify against her husband at his trial. Hailey is serving a life sentence.
Attorney claims mom killed child
An autopsy showed the toddler had bruises — both old and new — all over his face, his head, his abdomen, his back and his legs, plus old and new broken bones, and more.
Joseph David Heard’s attorney, Donald Rafferty, maintains that Hailey Heard caused the toddler’s death when she put her hand over his mouth, suffocating him.
Assistant District Attorneys George Huffman and Mara Joffe are prosecuting the death penalty case this week before Judge Larry Bourgeois.
In opening arguments, Joffe told the jury that Hailey Heard had been the victim of repeated domestic violence by Heard, and how her son’s torture and abuse at the hands of his stepfather was a repeat occurrence during the couple’s one-year relationship.
“This is a case about control,” Joffe said. “It’s about this defendant, Joseph David Heard, controlling his wife Hailey Heard and his 2-year-old stepson Hayden through violence, through abuse, and through torture.”
The torture and abuse that Hailey Heard and her son suffered, Joffe said, “was not isolated but was prolonged.”
“They had to do things his way or face punishment,” she said.
A 911 call, child abuse and toddler covered in bruises
When a 911 call came in that morning about an unresponsive child, authorities said the cause was first reported as a possible drowning.
But when Biloxi police, firefighters, and paramedics with American Medical Response responded to the call on St. Mary Boulevard, they found the child fully clothed and laying on the living floor. The child was not wet, Biloxi police said.
When AMR paramedic Mark Dillard arrived, he said that Hayden wasn’t moving , then twice gasped for air and stopped breathing.
Dillard said that he noticed extensive bruising on the toddler but kept doing what he could to revive the child.
A firefighter carried Hayden to the waiting ambulance, and AMR rushed the child down the street to Merit Health hospital in Biloxi.
‘Most horrific scene’
The emergency room physician, Dr. Leanne Lee, said she attempted additional life-saving measures on Hayden before pronouncing him dead around 7 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2021.
“It was one of the most horrific scenes I’ve witnessed as an ER doctor,” Lee said. “I had never seen a kid that had sustained so much trauma.”
Lee described the extensive bruising on Hayden’s body, along with broken bones in different stages of healing, a burn mark and more.
The state medical examiner, Dr. Staci Turner, said an autopsy showed the child died due to suffocation but had also sustained other significant injuries, including swelling in his head.
At the trial, Biloxi police read aloud pages of text messages between Heard and his wife. In them, he often sounded off about how Hayden had done something wrong and how he planned to exact his punishment on the child.
On some occasions, Hailey Heard said, Joseph David Heard punished the child by making him stand up and move his arms up and down repeatedly for hours at a time.
At other times, she said, Joseph David Heard made Hayden sit on his potty chairs for hours because the child had soiled his diaper.
When Hayden got in trouble at other times, Joseph David Heard told his wife he was going to hit her son’s hand, which had a second degree burn, with a rubber spatula.
The exchanges included repeated threats from Joseph David Heard to divorce his wife. She begged him to stay, although she was the one who worked and paid the bills.
Testimony in the capital murder case resumes Thursday morning.
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