blessyourheart's blog

oh. my. god.

 abuse

 I don't know if I have ever had such a visceral reaction to an article before. This guy never needs to see the light of day again. *WARNING* graphic.    

Mom of murdered infant testifiesAt ex-husband’s hearing, woman describes marital stress, finding her daughter deadBy RICK BRUNDRETT - rbrundrett@thestate.com

The pain on Angie Northcutt’s face hadn’t changed in the nearly six years since she last testified in a Lexington County courtroom.

In tearful testimony Monday, the Lexington County woman relived the ordeal of finding her 4-month-old daughter Breanna’s battered, lifeless body after returning home from work to her Red Bank-area home the evening of Jan. 7, 2001.

“She appeared white — very white,” Northcutt recalled. “I just grabbed her up and held all of her limbs. I ran out the front door screaming for help.”

A 4-month-old Breanna Nicole is shown in this family photograph.

Her then-husband, Clinton Robert Northcutt, later would confess to slapping, punching, shaking, choking and biting his infant daughter in a fit of rage before breaking her back on a crib rail.

The then-20-year-old construction worker told investigators he did it because his daughter wouldn’t stop crying, Lexington County Sheriff’s Lt. Scottie Frier testified Monday.

A jury in 2003 convicted Northcutt of murder and sentenced him to death. The S.C. Supreme Court in 2007 upheld his conviction but reversed his death sentence, ruling that 11th Circuit Solicitor Donnie Myers was “overly zealous” in his closing argument and improperly influenced jurors.

Myers, the solicitor since 1976, was not emotional in his questioning of witnesses Monday. The hearing this time is different because a judge, not a jury, will decide whether Northcutt will be put on Death Row again or receive a sentence of life in prison without parole.

The hearing before Circuit Judge James Williams of Orangeburg is scheduled to last several days, though it is unknown whether he will issue his ruling immediately afterward.

Northcutt, 28, dressed in a blue button-down shirt, showed no emotion during Monday’s testimony, often looking down while his ex-wife was on the stand or when Myers was going over autopsy photos with Frier.

Angie Northcutt, who divorced Northcutt after his arrest, testified she met her ex-husband when she was 17 and married him about two years later. She said he did little to help her with the care of their daughter, who was born in August 2000.

“He really wasn’t there to help out unless I was there to guide him,” she said, noting he would rather watch TV or play video games when home. “He didn’t even take the time to play with her. There was no bond there.”

She testified that to add to her stress, she found out around Christmas 2000 she was pregnant with their second child. Fed up with him, she said, she told him two days before Breanna’s death that she was leaving, but he hid her car keys and wouldn’t let her go.

“I just got worn down,” she testified. “I couldn’t even imagine taking care of another child.”

She said though she let their argument “blow over” that night, she was planning to take Breanna and stay with her mother after he left for his out-of-town construction job the next week.

She testified that two days later, which was a Sunday, she left for work at a nearby Lowe’s store about 12:30 p.m. She said when she called home about 4 p.m. to check on Breanna, he told her the infant had been sleeping “practically all day.”

But she said when she returned to her Platt Springs Road mobile home about 6:45 p.m., she discovered her then-husband was gone and his wedding ring was left on a table. After playing a phone message from him, she ran down the hallway and found Breanna’s lifeless body in her crib, she testified.

Robert Clinton Northcutt also took about $80 from a bank in the shape of a baby bottle, she said, noting she was planning to use the money to open a savings account for their daughter.

Frier, then a detective who now oversees the sheriff’s department violent crimes unit, testified that Northcutt, who was arrested hours later in Georgia, confessed that he became angry because his daughter wouldn’t stop crying, despite him feeding her and trying to play with her.

Northcutt told investigators he slapped and punched Breanna on the head and also choked her while she was in a swing, then took her out, “bearhugged” her and shook her for several minutes, Frier testified. When the baby started to convulse, Northcutt put her hand in his mouth and bit down, breaking her wrist, he said.

After she went limp, Northcutt said he threw the infant on a couch and punched her several times before taking her to her crib and punching her again on her back, Frier testified. Northcutt told investigators that after she died, he bent her tiny body over a crib rail, breaking her back, he said.

“He was pretty matter-of-fact in his description,” Frier recalled. “He wasn’t crying or upset.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney David Bruck, Frier acknowledged that Northcutt was cooperative with investigators.

Reach Brundrett at (803) 771-8484.

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