ALBANY – An appeals court has upheld the manslaughter conviction of a Troy woman who killed her son, ruling police did not violate her Miranda rights when they spoke to her about the child’s death.
Kiona B. Jackson, 25, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder but appealed her conviction on the grounds the judge who handled the case should have suppressed statements she gave to police. She’s serving the maximum sentence of 5 to 15 years in state prison for killing her son Jacquez Jackson five years ago.
In rejecting her case, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. Justice Sharon A. M. Aarons wrote, “The record reflects that defendant was neither handcuffed while being interviewed by law enforcement officials nor otherwise restricted in her movement.”
“At the interviews, defendant was cooperative, she spoke freely, she was never told that she could not leave and she was not subject to accusatory questioning,” the judges later noted, adding that Jackson was questioned in the presence of her mother in one interview and then with her boyfriend in another.
Once Jackson later became a suspect in her toddler’s death, the judges found detectives read her Miranda rights and that they did not coerce her confession when she admitted she struck the child with a closed fist.
Jackson was arrested Oct. 5, 2018 by city police after months of investigation for killing her son June 13, 2018 in their Lansingburgh apartment. State Police assisted in the investigation.
Ambulance crews responded to a call of a child in cardiac arrest. The toddler was taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital, where he later died.
Dr. Jeffrey D. Hubbard performed an autopsy on the boy and ruled the cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the abdomen,” according to police.
Jackson is serving her sentence at Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County.
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