WESTON, W.Va. — While praising Judge Jacob Reger’s attempts to keep the murder trial of Lena Lunsford evenhanded, defense attorney Tom Dyer contends the guilty verdict was almost inevitable “once the decision was made to have this trial in Lewis County.”
Lunsford was convicted Monday for the 2011 murder of her 3-year-old daughter Aliayah, and jurors also found her guilty of disposing of the child’s body in a wooded area near Vadis. Aliayah’s remains have not been located.
During Wednesday’s appearance on MetroNews “Talkline” with Hoppy Kercheval, Dyer said an appeal likely will center on the inability to find an impartial jury pool in Lewis County.
“The group that she was speaking to, I believe, was under such enormous pressure being a part of the very small, closely knit community where these events happened,” he said. “Are you going to be able to return to work, to your church group, to the Little League ballfield and face a group of people who are going to stare daggers for you if you voted not guilty?
“Once the decision was made to have this trial in Lewis County, it was over.”
The murder charge carries a life sentence, with jurors declining a chance of parole after 15 years. Sentencing is scheduled for June 28, at which point Reger also must impose prison terms for child abuse and concealment of a deceased body.
“I think a clinical academic analysis of the evidence — if you had had time to come and sit through the five or six days and heard what everybody heard — you’d be hard-pressed to suggest that a not guilty verdict may not have been appropriate here,” Dyer said. “It certainly deserved a lot of consideration at the very least.”
Deliberation lasted only two hours once the jury of 10 women and two men received the case Monday.
“I bet if you had drug in five or six of the bailiffs, who I consider to be independent onlookers, their view after the case closed … they expected a not guilty verdict,” Dyer said.
The jury convicted Lunsford of murder of one count of murder of a child by parent, guardian or custodian or other person by refusal or failure to necessities; one count of death of a child by parent, guardian, custodian or other person by child abuse; one count of child abuse resulting in injury; and one count of concealment of a deceased human body.
Because Aliayah’s body has never been recovered, Dyer said, finding her remains a possibility.
“I know things that didn’t come out in the trial,” he said. “It’s a possibility. It is a possibility that that body could be recovered at some point. And I hope down the road — and I’ve always hoped this — that we find this little girl somewhere.”
He said Lunsford had a difficult time watching two of her teenage daughters testify for the prosecution. Identified as DC and KC, the siblings who were 9 and 11 at the time of the disappearance claim their mother struck Aliayah with a wooden bed slate on the night of Sept. 23, 2011. The next morning, the girls said they found Aliayah unresponsive in her bed, beginning a frantic several hours in which Lena Lunsford futilely tried to revive the toddler before placing her lifeless body in a clothes hamper and driving several miles away to a secluded area.
Only after disposing of the body did Lunsford call 911 to report Aliayah missing. As a community volunteers joined local, state and federal agents in searching for the missing toddler, Lunsford made her DC and KC swear to secrecy, they said.
Lunsford did not take the stand in an effort to refute her daughters’ accounts.
“She had a difficult time sitting through the trial,” Dyer said. “(She) tried to remain stoic throughout.”
Dyer concluded his “pitch on appeal” will be that the jury made a decision not based on a “clinical academic analysis of the law and the facts.”