RIPLEY, W.Va. — An attorney representing a Jackson County man on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-month-old girl that later resulted in her death told a jury Wednesday that his client didn’t do it.
Benjamin Taylor, 33, of Cottagesville, is charged with the 2016 death of Emmaleigh Barringer. A 12-member jury and a handful of alternates began hearing testimony Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court in Ripley.
Taylor’s attorney Tim Rosinsky told the jury in his opening statement the issue in the case is Taylor has been falsely accused. He reminded jurors a guilty verdict means they believe Taylor did was he’s charged with beyond a reasonable doubt.
“He kept saying that but they haven’t really pointed the finger at anybody else,” WSAZ-TV reporter Leanne Shinkle, who was in the courtroom, told MetroNews.
In her opening statement, Jackson County Prosecutor Katie Franklin urged jurors to consider the brief life of Emmaleigh Barringer.
“You are going to hear a lot about how she died. You’re not going to hear a lot about the life she was supposed to have. She was a real life human being and her name was Emmaleigh,” Franklin said.
Among the first witnesses for the prosecution was Barringer’s mother, Taylor’s former girlfriend, Amanda Adkins. She described for the jury the night she woke up in the Fairplain apartment she shared with Taylor to find him in the basement with his young daughter.
“She said she walked down to the basement and she could just see him kneeling over the baby’s body and he was wiping her with a towel. She said she was really bloody,” Shinkle said.
The jury also heard a recording of Adkins’ call to emergency dispatchers.
“It was just piercing for anybody to listen to,” Shinkle said. “She was just screaming on the phone, more or less not talking to the dispatcher, but yelling at Benjamin Taylor, ‘What have you done? What did you do to her? Why is she bleeding?'”
Barringer died two days after the incident.
Testimony is scheduled to resume Thursday.