Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old. His father called him JD. He was just learning to walk, just learning to talk, just learning to navigate a world that would end for him on January 14, 2024, in a freshman dormitory at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia. The night before he died, someone did his hair. Someone recorded videos of him playing in the glow of a phone screen, holding his sippy cup, taking wobbly steps across the room in his pajamas. He looks like any other toddler in those videos. Happy. Healthy. Curious about everything. Reaching for someone off camera. Alive.
Today, almost two years later, a jury in Sumter County, Georgia watched those videos. They saw a little boy who had no idea what was coming. They saw him wave at the camera. They saw him toddle across the floor with the uncertain gait of a child still mastering the art of walking. They saw him drink from his sippy cup and hold it up proudly like he'd accomplished something. And then they heard, in excruciating detail, how that same child was rushed to a hospital the next day with his skull fractured so severely that the bones had separated, his brain hemorrhaging massively at the back of his head, and his liver lacerated so badly that emergency room doctors could feel the blood collecting under his skin when they examined him.
This is the trial of Trinity Madison Poague. She is 19 years old now. She was 18 when Romeo died. She was the former Miss Donalsonville, a title she won representing her small Georgia hometown. She was a Jimmy Carter Leadership Program scholarship recipient, chosen for her academic promise and community involvement. She was a Georgia Southwestern State University freshman with straight A's in her first semester, living in a dormitory on campus and building what looked like an impressive future. By every measure available before January 14, 2024, Trinity Poague was exactly the kind of young woman that small towns in Georgia celebrate: accomplished, ambitious, beautiful, on her way to something better.
Now she sits at the defense table in a Sumter County courtroom facing charges of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated battery, and cruelty to children in the first degree. The most serious charge, malice murder, carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. If convicted, Trinity Poague will spend the rest of her natural life behind bars. She will never graduate from college. She will never have children of her own. She will never again walk free in the world she once seemed destined to conquer.
The prosecution says she beat that baby to death in a jealous rage because he took too much of her boyfriend's attention. They say she resented the child from the beginning of her relationship with Julian Williams, the baby's father. They say she sent text messages expressing hatred for the toddler. They say she was alone with him for 35 minutes on January 14, 2024, and that during those 35 minutes, she inflicted injuries so catastrophic that the child died hours later despite the best efforts of emergency room physicians.
The defense says she is a second victim in this case, a young woman falsely accused while the actual perpetrator sits in the gallery watching the trial unfold. They say investigators rushed to judgment, focusing on Trinity from the moment they learned she was the last person with the child while barely investigating the child's own father. They say critical evidence was photographed and then thrown in a dumpster, lost forever, evidence that might have proven the child's injuries occurred before Trinity was ever alone with him. They say Julian Williams gave conflicting stories to investigators and medical personnel. They say he never took his son to a doctor, not one time in over a year of custody, raising questions about what kind of father he really was.
Day 1 of this trial gave the jury two completely different stories about what happened in that dormitory room. It gave them a grieving father who broke down on the witness stand describing how he found his son limp and unresponsive. It gave them a crime scene that contained no blood, no weapon, and no physical evidence of any violence whatsoever. It gave them evidence that was documented by investigators and then discarded, now decomposing in a landfill somewhere, forever beyond testing. And it left them with a question that will haunt this entire proceeding: Is the State of Georgia prosecuting the right person?
I watched every minute of this trial's first day. What I saw was a prosecution building a circumstantial case on a foundation of text messages, a 35-minute timeline, and a young woman's reaction when someone mentioned murder charges. What I also saw was a defense that systematically dismantled the credibility of the State's key witness before he ever finished testifying. By the time Judge Oliver Browning adjourned court for the day, I wasn't sure whether Trinity Poague was a murderer or a scapegoat. And looking at the faces of those twelve jurors, I don't think they were sure either.
Let me tell you what happened in that courtroom. Let me walk you through the competing narratives, the devastating testimony, and the glaring holes in the State's case. Let me show you what reasonable doubt looks like when a child is dead and someone has to answer for it.
The morning began with a motions hearing before the jury was seated. Defense attorney T. Gamble had filed a motion to exclude Julian Williams from the courtroom during testimony. Under Georgia law, victims and their representatives have a right to be present throughout a trial, but there's an exception: witnesses who will testify are typically sequestered to prevent them from tailoring their testimony to what they hear from other witnesses. Gamble argued that Julian Williams should be sequestered like any other witness.
But the prosecution pushed back with an argument that exposed a strange reality at the heart of this case. Julian Williams, they pointed out, had never legitimated Romeo Angeles. The child's birth certificate didn't list a father. Julian never went to court to establish paternity. He never did a DNA test. Under Georgia's victim's rights statute, the question became whether Julian even qualified as the victim's "parent" for purposes of courtroom access. If he didn't, the prosecution argued, then this victim would be entirely unrepresented in the proceedings meant to seek justice for his death.
Think about that for a moment. An 18-month-old child is dead, allegedly murdered, and there's a genuine legal question about whether anyone in that courtroom has standing to represent his interests. The biological mother, Sheyla Garnica, was reportedly back in Mexico. The grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, had died of cancer in October 2024, nine months after Romeo's death. The only family member available was a father who had never formally established that he was the father at all.
Judge Browning split the difference. Julian Williams would be excluded from the courtroom until after he testified. Once he took the stand and was subject to cross-examination, he could remain as the victim's family representative for the rest of the trial. It seemed like a reasonable compromise, a minor procedural matter that wouldn't affect the substance of the proceedings. By the end of the day, it would take on a different significance entirely, because the defense would spend their cross-examination of Julian Williams suggesting that the man claiming to represent the victim might actually be responsible for the victim's death.
Then came something that stopped the proceedings cold. The prosecutor informed the court that three of their witnesses, three law enforcement officers from Georgia Southwestern's campus police department, had been caught watching the live stream of the trial on their phones while waiting in the witness room. These officers were supposed to be sequestered. They were supposed to be isolated from any testimony that might influence their own recollections. Instead, they were watching opening statements on YouTube, following along with the very trial they were about to testify in.
The judge was not pleased. He immediately reinvoked the rule of sequestration, instructing all witnesses about proper conduct and the importance of not exposing themselves to other testimony. The defense reserved the right to question those officers about what they had seen and heard on the live stream, potentially impeaching their testimony if it appeared to have been influenced by what they watched. It was a bad look for the prosecution before the jury even entered the room, a suggestion that the State's witnesses couldn't follow basic instructions about trial procedure.
When the jury was finally seated and opening statements began, the prosecution went first. What they delivered was a narrative designed to be as emotionally devastating as it was legally calculated.
The prosecutor walked the jury through Romeo Angeles's short life, starting from his birth in Tallahassee, Florida. His mother, Sheyla Garnica, had been in a relationship with Julian Williams. When the baby was just a few months old, Sheyla decided to return to Mexico. Julian didn't want his son to go with her. So he took the child. Sheyla saw Romeo maybe three times after that, brief visits when Julian would bring the boy to Tallahassee. For all practical purposes, Julian Williams became a single father at 23 years old, working at a company in Bainbridge, Georgia that builds bridges and dams, trying to support himself and his infant son.
But he didn't raise the child alone, and this detail would become crucial as the trial unfolded. Julian's sister, Ashanti Burr, was the one who actually cared for Romeo day to day. Julian worked long hours. Ashanti watched the baby. When Julian came to Americus to visit his girlfriend, which was often, multiple times a week and almost every weekend from August 2023 through January 2024, Ashanti was the one left behind with JD. The prosecution presented this as a loving extended family arrangement. The defense would later suggest it showed Julian was barely involved in his own child's daily care.
Then came the relationship at the center of this case. Julian Williams started dating Trinity Poague in June 2023. She was 18, a recent high school graduate about to start her freshman year at Georgia Southwestern. He was 23, five years older, already working and raising a child. The relationship was volatile from the start. On again, off again. Breaking up on Thursday, back together by Friday. Arguments about social media passwords and who was texting whom and why she didn't respond fast enough when he messaged her. The prosecutor described it as rocky, unstable, driven by jealousy and resentment on both sides.
And at the center of that resentment, according to the State, was an 18-month-old boy who competed with Trinity for Julian's attention and affection.
The prosecutor told the jury about text messages Trinity sent to her roommate Paris Permore, messages dating back to August 2023 expressing anger and frustration about the child. In one message, the prosecutor said, Trinity wrote that she would really like to punch him. She wasn't talking about Julian. She was talking about the baby. In another message, sent the very night Romeo arrived in Americus for what would be his last weekend alive, she wrote words that would echo through the entire trial: "I can't do being around JD anymore. He hates me and I hate him."
That message was sent while the child was in her car, riding from Albany to Americus, heading to the dormitory where he would die the next day. Trinity Poague had just picked up her boyfriend and his toddler son. She was driving them to her dorm room where they would spend the night. And while that child sat in his car seat behind her, she was texting her roommate about how much she hated him.
The prosecutor walked the jury through the weekend of January 13-14, 2024, in meticulous detail. Julian and Trinity met in Albany on Saturday afternoon. She had suggested he bring JD with him, which the prosecution found notable given her expressed resentment of the child. They went to Chipotle for lunch. Then McDonald's, where the child ate only a couple of French fries. Then a makeup store called Sephora. By late afternoon, they transferred the car seat from Julian's vehicle to Trinity's so the baby could ride with her. They drove to Americus, arriving at Georgia Southwestern's campus around 10 PM.
When they reached Trinity's dormitory room, JD was asleep. Julian put him on an air mattress at the foot of Trinity's bed. Julian went to sleep himself shortly after. But Trinity stayed up. According to testimony that would come later, she was the one caring for the child when he woke up during the night. She was the one who noticed when he rolled off the air mattress and fell. She was the one who texted her roommate about it.
Sometime during that night, other students in the dormitory heard a baby crying. According to witnesses the prosecution would call later in the trial, the crying went on for what seemed like a long time. Prolonged, persistent crying that carried through the walls of the dormitory. Then it stopped. Whatever happened during those nighttime hours, the child appeared fine in videos Trinity recorded afterward. The prosecutor showed the jury those videos: JD calm, happy, playing with his hands, drinking from his sippy cup, showing no visible distress. Whatever had happened the night before, it hadn't left obvious marks.
Sunday morning, January 14, Romeo woke around 9:30 AM. Julian put the toddler on his chest for a while, a tender moment between father and son that the prosecutor lingered on. They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut. The child was given Fritos and Mountain Dew for breakfast, sitting in a pink saucer chair watching a children's show called Cuturi, a cartoon about birds. Julian and Trinity took a shower together. Julian got out first, got dressed, told JD goodbye, and left around 11:55 AM to pick up the pizza and get some drinks from Walmart.
He was gone 35 minutes.
The prosecutor's voice dropped as he described what the State believed happened during that window. When Julian left, his son was sitting up in the pink chair, eating chips, drinking soda, watching cartoons. Alive. Alert. By all appearances, healthy. When Julian returned 35 minutes later, Trinity called to say something was wrong. The child wasn't breathing. He wasn't responding. Something terrible had happened while Julian was gone.
Julian rushed back inside the dormitory. Trinity was holding the baby. He was limp, unresponsive, his body slack in her arms. She said she didn't know what was wrong. Julian threw the pizza on the bed. He dropped the Walmart bags on the floor. He grabbed his son and ran. In the car, racing toward Phoebe Sumter Hospital, the child started vomiting. Foam and blood came from his nose and mouth. Julian held him on his shoulder, patting his back, trying to clear his airway, driving as fast as he could.
By the time they reached the emergency room, there was no pulse. No heartbeat. No blood pressure. No spontaneous breathing. The child was, for all practical purposes, already gone. Doctors would work on him for hours, trying to stabilize him enough to helicopter him to Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta. They never got him stable enough to fly. At approximately 4:28 PM, nearly four hours after Julian brought him in, Romeo Angeles took his last breath. He was 18 months old.
The prosecutor then described the injuries doctors discovered on that little boy. Fresh bruises on his face, including a pattern bruise on his left cheek consistent with a hard slap or pinch, the kind of mark left when someone grabs a child's face with force. Four or five fresh bruises on top of his head, hidden by his hair until doctors examined him closely. A fracture to the occipital bone at the base of his skull, the thick bone that protects the brain stem, so severe that it caused the skull to separate at what doctors call the lambdoidal suture, the junction where the bones of the skull meet. A massive hemorrhage at the back of his head, blood collecting between the skull and the brain, so fresh that emergency room staff could feel it bulging under the skin when they touched him. A massive laceration to his liver, the kind of internal injury that causes blood to pool in the abdomen.
These were not old injuries, the prosecutor emphasized. These were not injuries that happened hours or days before the child was brought to the hospital. The catastrophic head trauma, according to medical testimony the State would present, occurred within minutes of emergency personnel beginning their examination. The bleeding was too fresh. The injuries were too acute. Whatever happened to Romeo Angeles happened in that 35-minute window when Julian Williams was at Pizza Hut and Walmart and Trinity Madison Poague was alone with the child.
The prosecutor acknowledged he had no eyewitness to what happened in that room. No video from inside showing the moment of injury. No confession from Trinity Poague. But he promised the jury medical experts who would testify this was inflicted trauma, not accidental injury. He promised forensic evidence establishing that the injuries were consistent with violent assault, not a fall from a chair or a bed. He promised testimony that would show Trinity Poague was the only person with the opportunity to cause these wounds. And he asked the jury, at the end of this trial, to hold her accountable for the death of a child who couldn't protect himself.
Then the defense stood up and told an entirely different story.
Attorney T. Gamble opened his statement by telling the jury that this case has not one victim, but two. The first victim is obvious, he said. JD, the 18-month-old child who suffered tragic injuries and lost his life. No one disputes that tragedy. No one minimizes the horror of what happened to that little boy. But the second victim, Gamble continued, sits at the defense table. Trinity Madison Poague has been accused of a crime she did not commit, prosecuted based on speculation and assumption rather than actual evidence, her life destroyed because investigators decided she was guilty before they finished processing the scene.
Gamble painted Julian Williams in colors the prosecution never mentioned. He was a controlling boyfriend, Gamble said, the kind of young man who demands access to all his girlfriend's social media passwords. Julian wanted to know who Trinity was talking to. He wanted to know where she was at all times. He wanted immediate responses when he texted her, and he got angry when she didn't reply fast enough. He didn't want her around other men. The relationship was volatile, yes, but the volatility came from Julian's jealousy and control as much as from Trinity's alleged resentment.
And while Julian played the role of devoted father, Gamble said, his sister Ashanti was the one who actually raised the child day to day. Julian worked. Ashanti parented. When Julian came to Americus to see Trinity, which happened constantly, Ashanti was left behind to care for the baby he claimed to love so much. This was not a father who was deeply bonded with his son. This was a father who let other people do the hard work of parenting while he pursued his romantic relationship.
Then came the detail that made the jury shift in their seats. Julian Williams never took his son to a doctor. Not one time. In over a year of having custody of this child, not a single wellness check. Not a single immunization appointment. Not a single visit to a pediatrician for any reason. The only medical care Romeo Angeles ever received came from his biological mother during the brief times Julian brought him to Tallahassee, and even that was sporadic at best. What kind of father, Gamble implied, has custody of a toddler for more than a year and never once takes him to see a doctor?
Gamble told the jury Julian was drinking that weekend. The Saturday they met in Albany, Julian had rum with him in the car. A bottle of Bamboo rum that was two-thirds gone by the time investigators photographed Trinity's dorm room on Sunday. Gamble suggested Julian was drinking heavily Saturday night, possibly passed out drunk while Trinity cared for the child, which would explain why he claimed not to hear the baby crying that other residents of the dormitory reported. If Julian was intoxicated, he might not have heard anything. He might not have known what was happening in that room while he slept.
And then Gamble dropped what he clearly believed was the bombshell that would define this case. When GBI investigators searched the dumpster outside Trinity's dormitory, they found trash bags containing three diapers. One of those diapers contained feces, and according to the defense, that fecal matter appeared to have a dark, reddish-brown coloration. The defense filed a motion asking that the diaper be tested for blood. If there was blood in that child's stool, it would indicate internal injuries, damage to the digestive system, trauma that occurred well before the 35-minute window the prosecution was hanging their entire case on. It would blow a hole in the State's timeline. It would prove that Romeo Angeles was already injured, possibly severely, before Trinity Poague was ever alone with him.
But investigators threw that diaper away. They photographed it. They documented it. And then they put it back in the dumpster. The garbage was collected. The evidence is gone, buried in a landfill somewhere, decomposing beyond any possibility of testing. The defense will never get to prove what that dark substance in the diaper was. The jury will never know whether the child had blood in his stool before he was alone with Trinity. That evidence was destroyed by the very investigators who should have preserved it.
Gamble told the jury that Julian Williams gave conflicting stories to investigators and medical personnel. At the hospital, he allegedly told Dr. Busman that the child fell face-first five minutes before being brought in. He told police officers a different version of events. At one point during the weekend, he reportedly said the child fell on Friday, before they even came to Americus. The stories didn't line up. The details kept changing. And investigators, Gamble suggested, never pressed him on those inconsistencies because they had already decided Trinity was their suspect.
The defense theory was crystal clear by the end of Gamble's opening: investigators rushed to judgment. They focused on Trinity from the moment they learned she was the last person alone with the child. They interviewed everyone who knew her. They searched her dorm room. They analyzed her text messages. They built a case around her supposed motive and opportunity. But they barely investigated Julian Williams. They didn't press him on his conflicting stories. They didn't collect potentially exculpatory evidence. They threw away diapers that might have contained blood. They assumed Trinity was guilty and worked backward to prove it, ignoring any evidence that pointed elsewhere.
"In seeking justice," Gamble told the jury, "do not let justice be found at the cross of innocent blood."
The first witnesses after opening statements were law enforcement officers from Georgia Southwestern's campus police department. Their testimony was relatively brief but significant for what it established about the crime scene and the timeline.
Lieutenant Nathaniel Millage, a 27-year veteran of the campus police department, testified that he received a call on January 14, 2024 about an injured child who had been transported from campus to Phoebe Sumter Hospital. The initial report, Millage said, was that the baby had fallen. No one was talking about abuse or assault. No one suspected foul play. It was a child who fell and got hurt and needed medical attention.
Millage dispatched Officer Lorenzo Johnson to Trinity's dormitory with instructions to secure the scene. Even though the initial report suggested an accident, Millage wanted the room preserved just in case. He told Johnson to treat it as a potential crime scene and let no one enter. Then Millage himself went to the hospital to gather more information about what had happened.
On cross-examination, the defense established something important: Trinity Poague was at the hospital from the moment Officer Johnson secured that dormitory room. She had ridden to the hospital with Julian and the injured child. She was there when police arrived. She couldn't have gone back to the dorm to tamper with evidence. She couldn't have cleaned anything up. She couldn't have removed anything incriminating. Whatever was in that room when Officer Johnson arrived was exactly what was there when Trinity left.
Officer Johnson's testimony confirmed this. From the moment he secured that room until GBI investigators took over, no one except law enforcement entered. The scene was pristine, exactly as Trinity and Julian had left it when they rushed the child to the hospital. And when the defense asked Johnson what he observed when he looked into that room, his answer was striking. He saw nothing that would cause him any alarm. Nothing that would make him believe anything violent had occurred there. No blood on the walls. No overturned furniture. No signs of a struggle. Just a college student's dormitory room with an air mattress on the floor and some fast food on the bed.
Chief Michael Lewis testified next about the video surveillance from the dormitory. Georgia Southwestern, like most college campuses, has security cameras in the hallways of its residential buildings. Lewis had reviewed all the footage from the hallway outside Trinity's room and created a detailed timeline of everyone who entered and exited during the relevant period. The jury watched those videos on a large screen.
At 10:06 PM on Saturday, January 13, Trinity, Julian, and the baby entered the hallway. Trinity was carrying JD in her arms. They disappeared into her room and didn't emerge until the next day.
At 11:55 AM on Sunday, January 14, Julian left the hallway alone. He was carrying two trash bags, which he would later deposit in the dumpster outside the building before heading to Pizza Hut and Walmart.
At 12:30 PM, Julian returned to the hallway, carrying a pizza box in one hand and Walmart bags in the other. He walked quickly toward Trinity's room.
At 12:31 PM, just 77 seconds after he entered, Julian exited the hallway carrying the child in his arms. Running. The pizza and the Walmart bags were no longer visible. He had dropped everything and grabbed his son.
At 12:36 PM, Trinity left the hallway, following Julian to the hospital.
That 77-second turnaround told a story without words. Julian entered with pizza. Less than a minute and a half later, he exited with his dying son. Whatever he found in that room was bad enough that he didn't even take time to set down the food properly. He threw it and ran. The surveillance video captured the urgency of a father who knew something was catastrophically wrong.
Then came the witness the defense had been waiting for all morning: GBI Special Agent James Gibson, the crime scene specialist who had processed Trinity's dorm room and the dumpster outside.
Agent Gibson has impressive credentials, and the prosecution made sure the jury heard all of them. Ten years with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Approximately 3,000 hours of training in crime scene investigation. Close to 200 death investigations over his career. Advanced certifications in fingerprint analysis, DNA collection, bloodstain pattern analysis. He has been qualified as an expert witness in courtrooms across Georgia at least 20 times since 2021, testifying about crime scene processing and forensic evidence. Every single time, he testified for the prosecution.
The defense would make that point explicitly during cross-examination. When Gamble asked how many times Agent Gibson had testified for the defense in his career, the answer was never. Not once. Zero times. Gibson claimed the GBI doesn't work for the prosecution or the defense, that they're neutral fact-finders who go where the evidence leads. But the pattern of his testimony suggested otherwise. In the adversarial system of American criminal justice, Agent Gibson had chosen a side, even if he wouldn't admit it.
Gibson's direct examination was thorough and methodical. He described being called to the scene on January 14, 2024. He went first to Phoebe Sumter Hospital to photograph the child's body and document any visible injuries. What he saw, he testified, was slight bruising on the face and possibly on the head, though the head injuries were difficult to observe because of the child's hair. Nothing that stood out dramatically. Nothing that immediately screamed violent assault. Just a critically injured toddler whose external appearance didn't obviously match the catastrophic internal damage doctors were discovering.
From the hospital, Gibson went to Georgia Southwestern's campus. His first stop was the dumpster outside the dormitory, because surveillance video showed Julian Williams had disposed of trash there before leaving to get pizza. Gibson pulled the trash bags out of the dumpster and went through them piece by piece, photographing everything he found.
In those bags were four diapers. Three were in one bag, one in another. One of them contained feces. Gibson photographed it, documented its location, and then put it back in the dumpster along with everything else he had examined. He moved on to process the dormitory room.
What he found inside that room was remarkable for what was absent.
No blood anywhere. Gibson walked through the entire room, examined every surface, looked in every corner. Not a single drop of blood. Not on the floor. Not on the walls. Not on the bed or the air mattress or the pink chair where the child had allegedly been sitting when the assault occurred. In a case where the prosecution was alleging a beating severe enough to fracture a skull and lacerate a liver, there was no blood anywhere in the room.
No bodily fluids except a small stain on a bath mat in the bathroom area that might have been vomit. Gibson measured it: approximately two inches long and one inch wide. A tiny amount of potential biological material in a room where a child had allegedly been beaten nearly to death.
No weapon. Gibson looked for anything that could have been used to inflict the injuries the child suffered. He found nothing. No bat, no stick, no heavy object with blood or hair or tissue on it. Nothing that suggested someone had grabbed a weapon and struck a toddler hard enough to crack his skull.
No damage to the walls or furniture. No signs of a struggle. No overturned objects. No indication that anything violent had happened in that space. The room, Gibson acknowledged under questioning, looked like a college student's dorm room. Messy, sure. Lived in. But nothing out of place. Nothing that would make an experienced crime scene investigator suspect violence.
Gibson photographed the sippy cup sitting on the desk. The child's sippy cup, the one he had been drinking from that morning while watching cartoons about birds. Gibson did not collect it. He did not swab it for DNA. He did not preserve it for any kind of forensic analysis. He just photographed it and moved on.
He photographed a pacifier sitting on top of a laptop. Again, no collection. No DNA swab. Just documentation.
He photographed the pink saucer chair where the child had allegedly been sitting when the assault occurred. He measured it at 13 inches high. But he didn't collect it. He didn't test it for contact DNA that might show who had been in the chair. He didn't look for blood or biological material that might indicate injury. He photographed it and left it there.
He photographed the bed frame, measuring it at 40 inches high. He photographed the Walmart bags Julian had dropped on the floor. He photographed the Pizza Hut box Julian had thrown on the bed. He photographed everything in the room methodically and thoroughly. But he collected almost nothing, because there was nothing to collect. The crime scene had no physical evidence of a crime.
The defense cross-examination was devastating, particularly on the subject of the diapers.
Gibson admitted he found four diapers in the dumpster. Three in one trash bag, one in another. One of them contained feces. Gamble asked if the feces appeared to have a dark brown reddish color. Gibson hedged. He said he only saw brown. He didn't notice any red. But he acknowledged, when pressed, that he's not a medical professional. He's not trained to identify blood in fecal matter. He wouldn't necessarily know what to look for.
Gamble asked if Gibson was aware that blood can appear in a child's stool when that child has internal injuries, particularly injuries to the digestive system. Gibson acknowledged it was possible. He's seen cases where internal trauma manifested in bloody stool. It's a known indicator of certain types of injuries.
Then came the question the defense had been building toward: Why didn't Gibson collect that diaper for testing? If there was any possibility it contained blood, if that blood could have indicated injuries occurring before the 35-minute window the prosecution was relying on, why wasn't it preserved?
Gibson said he stood by what he did. He didn't see any blood. He didn't think the diaper was relevant. He made a judgment call in the field, and he believed it was the right call based on what he observed. If he had known the diaper would become an issue at trial, if he had suspected defense attorneys would argue about it, maybe he would have collected it. But he didn't know that then. So he photographed it, put it back in the dumpster, and moved on.
But now those diapers are gone. They were hauled away with the rest of the garbage, compacted in a truck, dumped in a landfill, buried under tons of other refuse. They can never be tested. The defense will never be able to prove whether there was blood in that diaper, blood that would have indicated the child was already suffering internal injuries before Trinity Poague was ever alone with him. The State threw away potential exculpatory evidence, and there's no way to get it back.
Gamble pressed further. Was anything collected from that dorm room that was of any use in determining what happened to the child?
Gibson's answer was a single devastating word: no.
This was a documentation case, he explained. He went in, he took pictures, and he left. There was nothing in that room that told the story of a violent crime. No blood to collect. No weapon to bag. No biological evidence to preserve. The crime scene was essentially clean, and Gibson's job was to record that cleanliness for the jury to evaluate.
The defense asked about luminol, the chemical compound that crime scene investigators use to detect blood even after someone has tried to clean it up. Luminol reacts with hemoglobin and produces a visible glow, revealing blood stains that are invisible to the naked eye. Gibson acknowledged he's familiar with luminol. He's used it in other cases. He's found blood that had been wiped away, scrubbed with cleaners, bleached, and still showed up under luminol testing.
Did he use luminol in Trinity Poague's dorm room?
No.
Why not?
He had no indication blood was a factor, Gibson said. The child's visible injuries were minimal. There was nothing at the scene suggesting blood would be present. He made a judgment call not to deploy luminol.
But wait, Gamble said. The prosecution's theory is that Trinity Poague beat this child severely enough to fracture his skull and lacerate his liver. Liver lacerations bleed. A lot. Internal hemorrhaging might not leave blood on the floor, but external injuries from a beating typically would. Didn't Gibson think it was worth checking? Didn't the severity of the alleged assault warrant at least testing to see if blood had been cleaned up?
Gibson stood by his decision. He saw the child's body at the hospital. The visible injuries were slight. There was nothing suggesting he would find blood in the room. He used his professional judgment, and he believed it was sound.
And that, perhaps, was the most troubling part of Gibson's testimony for the prosecution's case. He saw Romeo Angeles's body at the hospital. He documented the external injuries. And he described them as slight bruising, nothing that stood out, nothing that screamed violent assault. The prosecution was asking the jury to believe that Trinity Poague beat this child with enough force to separate the bones of his skull, and the crime scene specialist who examined the body found nothing remarkable about his external appearance.
The defense asked if Gibson would know a beating death if he saw one. He said yes. He's worked scenes where people were beaten to death. In those cases, you can tell immediately. The injuries are obvious. The violence is apparent. There are marks, wounds, blood, signs of the assault. This wasn't that. Romeo Angeles's external injuries were subtle. His internal injuries were catastrophic. The disconnect between those two realities would become central to this trial.
Then Julian Williams took the stand, and everything shifted.
He is 25 years old now, 23 at the time his son died. He works at Steward Machine in Bainbridge, a company that builds bridges and dams, doing welding and painting. He has lived in Colquitt, Georgia his entire life, first with his mother and sister, now with his sister Ashanti in the house they shared with their mother before she passed away. Elizabeth Williams died of cancer in October 2024, nine months after Romeo's death. Julian lost his son in January. He lost his mother in October. He told the jury the exact date of his mother's death, the precision of his grief evident in how he tracked those terrible milestones.
Julian explained how he came to have custody of JD. The child's mother, Sheyla Garnica, was in a relationship with Julian when she got pregnant. After the baby was born in Tallahassee, Sheyla decided to return to Mexico. Julian didn't want his son to leave the country. So he took him. There was no formal custody arrangement, no court order, no legal process. Julian just took the baby and brought him to Georgia. Sheyla saw the child maybe three times after that, brief visits when Julian would bring him to Tallahassee. She never fought to get him back.
Julian acknowledged he never legitimated the child. He never went to court to establish paternity. He never did a DNA test. His name wasn't on the birth certificate. He didn't even have a copy of the birth certificate, he said, because it was at the biological mother's house in Tallahassee. He didn't have the child's medical records either. He was, in the legal sense, not officially the father of the child he was raising.
But he raised him nonetheless, Julian insisted. Except he didn't, not really. Julian worked long hours at Steward Machine. The commute from Colquitt to Bainbridge took time. His sister Ashanti was the one who took care of JD during the day, every day. She changed diapers. She fed him. She put him down for naps. When Julian came home from work, Ashanti handed the baby over for evening time with Dad. And when Julian wanted to go to Americus to see Trinity, which was three or four times a week and virtually every weekend from August 2023 onward, Ashanti was the one left behind watching the child.
Julian testified about his relationship with Trinity. Volatile, he admitted. Up and down. Arguments about social media passwords and her not answering his texts fast enough. He wanted access to all her accounts. She had given him most of them but wouldn't give up her Instagram password. They argued about it. They broke up over it. Then they got back together and argued about something else. The relationship was a rollercoaster, Julian said, but he loved her. He thought she loved him. They were trying to make it work.
He insisted he never saw Trinity hurt his child. Not once. The only incident he could recall was in November 2023, when Trinity was keeping JD at her dorm while Julian worked. She texted Julian and his sister that the baby had a bruise over his eye. Her explanation: she was cleaning the room and opened a drawer, and the child ran into the corner of it. Julian confronted her about it when he arrived in Americus. She cried, he said. She apologized. She said she would never hurt the baby. He believed her and moved on.
Julian walked the jury through the weekend of January 13-14 in exhaustive detail. Meeting Trinity in Albany on Saturday afternoon. Going to Chipotle, then McDonald's. The child not eating much, just a couple of French fries. Putting the car seat in Trinity's car so JD could ride with her to Americus. Getting to Georgia Southwestern around 10 PM. Putting the sleeping baby on the air mattress at the foot of Trinity's bed. Going to sleep himself while Trinity stayed up.
The next morning, JD woke around 9:30. Julian put the toddler on his chest for a while, enjoying quiet time together. They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut. Julian and Trinity took a shower together. He got out a few minutes before she did, got dressed, told JD goodbye, and left to pick up the pizza and get some drinks from Walmart. The child was sitting in the pink saucer chair, eating Fritos, drinking Mountain Dew, watching Cuturi, the cartoon about birds.
Julian was gone about 35 minutes. As he was pulling back onto campus, his phone rang. Trinity calling. Two calls, 20-30 seconds apart. On the second call, he heard her voice, panicked, saying "JD, JD, JD." Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
He rushed back to the dorm. Trinity met him at the door. She was holding the baby. He was limp, unresponsive, his body slack. She said she didn't know what was wrong. Julian didn't waste time asking questions. He threw the pizza on the bed, dropped the Walmart bags, grabbed his son, and ran. In the car, speeding toward Phoebe Sumter Hospital, the child started vomiting. Foam and blood came from his nose and mouth. Julian held him on his shoulder, patting his back, trying to clear his airway, talking to him, begging him to be okay.
At the emergency room, nurses took the child immediately. Doctors surrounded him. They tried to stabilize him, to get his vitals under control so they could helicopter him to Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta where pediatric specialists could take over. They never got him stable enough to fly. The helicopter sat on the pad waiting. Romeo Angeles never made it off the ground. At approximately 4:28 PM, three hours after Julian brought him in, the child was pronounced dead.
Julian's testimony about what happened at the hospital was the prosecution's strongest moment of the day. While doctors were working on the child, Julian called his cousin Joanie, who is a nurse. He wanted someone with medical knowledge to understand what the doctors were saying, to translate the medical terminology into something he could grasp. He put Joanie on speaker phone so she could hear the doctors' updates.
After one of those updates, after the doctors described the severity of the child's injuries, Joanie said something that made Trinity react.
"If the baby dies, somebody's getting charged with murder."
According to Julian, Trinity's demeanor changed immediately. Her face shifted. She stood up, said she was going to call her parents, and left the area where they had been waiting. Julian never saw her again. They never spoke another word to each other. From that moment until today, Trinity Poague and Julian Williams have had no contact whatsoever.
The prosecution would call this consciousness of guilt. An innocent person, they would suggest, doesn't react that way to someone mentioning murder charges. An innocent person doesn't flee to call their parents. An innocent person stays, helps figure out what happened, expresses concern and confusion and grief. Trinity's reaction, her immediate departure when the word "murder" was spoken, suggested she knew exactly what had happened in that dorm room. She knew because she had done it.
Then came the cross-examination. And the careful narrative the prosecution had built began to crumble.
Defense attorney Gamble went after Julian Williams methodically, piece by piece, establishing a portrait of a man who was not the devoted father the prosecution had presented.
The controlling behavior in the relationship came first. Gamble asked about the demands for social media passwords. Julian admitted he wanted access to Trinity's accounts. He said she wanted his passwords too, so they exchanged them. But Trinity wouldn't give him her Instagram password, and that became a recurring fight between them. Why did he need access to all her accounts? What was he looking for? Julian said he just wanted to see who she was talking to. He wanted to know what was going on in her life. He didn't think that was unusual.
The jealousy when Trinity was around other people came next. Julian admitted he didn't like it when she was with other men. He admitted they argued about it. He denied being unusually controlling, but the picture emerging was of a young man who kept close tabs on his girlfriend and didn't like it when she had any independence.
Then Gamble asked about medical care. Had Julian ever taken JD to a doctor?
No.
Not one time in over a year of custody?
No. Julian said the only medical care came when he took the child to Tallahassee so the biological mother could take him to appointments. Julian himself never took his son to see a doctor. Not for wellness checks. Not for immunizations. Not for any reason.
Did Julian know if the child was up to date on his immunizations?
He knew the child got some shots. He didn't know if they were current. He didn't know which vaccines the child had received or when. He left that to the biological mother during their sporadic visits.
Gamble asked about the car seat. Video from that weekend showed the child's car seat facing forward. Was Julian aware that children under four years old are supposed to be rear-facing, according to safety guidelines?
No, Julian said. He was not aware of that recommendation. He had been using a forward-facing seat for a toddler who should have been rear-facing. Another detail suggesting this was not a father who paid close attention to his child's safety and wellbeing.
Gamble asked about the rum. Julian admitted the bottle of Bamboo rum in Trinity's dorm room was his. He admitted he was drinking Saturday while they were in Albany. He admitted the bottle was approximately two-thirds gone by the time investigators photographed the room on Sunday. But he insisted he didn't drink until after the child was already in Trinity's car for the ride to Americus. He wasn't drinking while his son was in his care, he claimed. Just after.
Gamble pressed on the hospital records. Didn't Julian tell Dr. Busman that the child fell five minutes before arriving at the hospital?
Julian denied it. He said Trinity told him and the responding officer that the child fell off the chair, and that's what he repeated to medical personnel. Any notation in hospital records about a fall five minutes before must have been a confusion between his account and Trinity's. He didn't say it. He couldn't have said it, because he wasn't there when whatever happened to the child happened.
But the hospital records said what they said. Dr. Busman documented what Julian told him. The defense would argue those records showed Julian giving inconsistent stories, changing his version of events, unable to keep his lies straight. The prosecution would argue it was just confusion in a chaotic emergency room situation. The jury would have to decide which interpretation to believe.
The cross-examination built a devastating counter-narrative. Julian Williams was not a devoted father. He was a young man who let his sister raise his child while he pursued his girlfriend. He never took his son to a doctor. He was drinking the weekend of the child's death. He may have given conflicting accounts to medical personnel. He had the child for over a year and never even established legal paternity. And now investigators were supposed to believe he had nothing to do with his son's death?
When Julian testified that he still had a shirt and jacket at home covered with the child's vomit from the car ride to the hospital, Gamble pounced. Did the GBI ever collect that evidence?
No.
Did they ever ask about it?
No.
Was anyone from law enforcement interested in testing that clothing, examining it for evidence, determining what substances might be present in the child's vomit?
No. The shirt and jacket are still at Julian's house, still at the foot of his bed, never washed, never examined. Evidence that might have revealed something about the child's condition was sitting in a bedroom in Colquitt, Georgia, ignored by investigators who had apparently decided early on that Trinity Poague was their suspect and no one else needed to be seriously investigated.
The prosecution's redirect was brief. Julian denied ever hurting his child. He denied allowing anyone else to hurt his child. He insisted the only marks on JD when he left to get pizza were the normal eczema patches that came and went on the child's cheeks, patches he had been dealing with since birth. When Julian left for Pizza Hut, his son was eating chips and watching cartoons and appeared completely normal. When he returned 35 minutes later, that same child was dying in Trinity's arms.
The jury heard Julian's denials. But they also heard everything Gamble had established. And when Judge Browning adjourned court for the day, the question hanging in the air was not whether Trinity Poague killed this child. The question was whether the State of Georgia was prosecuting the right person. Whether investigators had followed the evidence or followed their assumptions. Whether reasonable doubt existed not because the defense had invented it, but because the prosecution's own case was riddled with holes.
Day 1 of this trial presented the jury with something unusual in a murder case: a prosecution theory that was simultaneously emotionally compelling and evidentiary thin.
The compelling parts are obvious and undeniable. Trinity Poague sent text messages saying she hated the child she's accused of killing, messages sent while that child was literally in her car riding to the place where he would die. She was alone with Romeo during the 35-minute window when the prosecution claims fatal injuries were inflicted. Her reaction when someone mentioned murder charges was to leave immediately and call her parents. She never spoke to Julian Williams again. These are the building blocks of a circumstantial case, and they are not nothing. They tell a story of a young woman who resented a toddler, had opportunity to harm him, and behaved in ways suggesting guilty knowledge when the consequences became clear.
But circumstantial cases require more than suspicious behavior and unfortunate timing. They require evidence that excludes all reasonable alternative explanations. They require proof that points to one conclusion and one conclusion only. They require the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt, not just raise reasonable suspicion. And that's where Day 1 revealed the prosecution's fundamental problem.
The crime scene specialist found no physical evidence of violence. Not a drop of blood in a case where the State alleges a child was beaten severely enough to fracture his skull, separate the bones of his cranium, and lacerate his liver. Not a single sign of struggle in a dormitory room where an 18-month-old supposedly suffered a fatal assault. No weapon. No defensive wounds documented on the defendant. No DNA evidence collected. No luminol testing conducted. The room looked like any other college student's room, messy and lived-in but utterly unremarkable. Nothing suggested violence had occurred there.
This creates what lawyers call reasonable doubt. If Trinity Poague inflicted the injuries the State describes, where is the physical evidence? Blood from a lacerated liver has to go somewhere. Blunt force trauma sufficient to cause massive brain hemorrhaging would typically leave external marks, traces, something for investigators to find. The crime scene specialist acknowledged he has worked beatings where you can tell immediately that violence occurred. This wasn't that. Romeo's external injuries were described as "slight bruising." His crime scene was pristine. The disconnect between the alleged assault and the physical evidence is enormous.
The defense didn't just poke holes in the prosecution's case. They offered an alternative theory of the crime, a different suspect, a different explanation for what happened to Romeo Angeles. Julian Williams. The father who never took his child to a doctor in over a year of custody. The boyfriend who was drinking while his girlfriend cared for his son. The witness who allegedly told hospital staff one thing and police another. The man whose side of the family was barely investigated while every resource went toward proving Trinity's guilt.
This is what defense attorneys call a SODDI defense: Some Other Dude Did It. It's a risky strategy because juries sometimes see it as deflection, as a defendant pointing fingers rather than addressing the evidence against her. But when the "other dude" is the victim's own father, and when investigators can be shown to have focused almost exclusively on the defendant from the beginning while ignoring other possibilities, SODDI becomes more than deflection. It becomes a legitimate basis for reasonable doubt.
The jury watched Julian Williams testify. They saw a grieving father who lost his son and his mother within nine months of each other. That's genuinely sympathetic. No one can deny the tragedy of losing a child, whatever the circumstances. But they also watched the defense take that sympathetic father apart piece by piece. No medical care for his son in over a year. Drinking that weekend while someone else watched his child. Conflicting stories about what happened. A sister who actually raised the child day to day while Julian pursued his relationship. An investigation that barely looked at him as a suspect.
When jurors eventually deliberate, they will remember both versions of Julian Williams. The grieving father who found his son limp and rushed him to the hospital. And the negligent parent who never took his child to a doctor, who was drinking while his toddler was in someone else's care, who may have told different stories to different people about what happened. The question is which version they believe. And right now, after Day 1, that question doesn't have an obvious answer.
The constitutional protections we're watching play out in this courtroom exist for a reason that goes beyond any individual case. Our system would rather let guilty people go free than imprison innocent ones. That's not just a platitude we recite in civics class. It's the foundation of everything happening in Sumter County this week, the principle that separates American justice from systems where the accusation is the conviction.
The State of Georgia bears the burden of proof in this case. Trinity Poague doesn't have to prove she's innocent. She doesn't have to explain what happened in that dormitory room. She doesn't have to offer an alternative theory of the crime or identify another suspect. All she has to do is sit at that defense table while the prosecution attempts to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If they fail, if any juror harbors reasonable doubt about her guilt, she walks free regardless of what anyone thinks actually happened to Romeo Angeles.
This is hard for people to accept, especially in cases involving dead children. The emotional pull is overwhelming. Someone has to be responsible. Someone has to pay. An 18-month-old doesn't just die from catastrophic injuries with no one held accountable. That feels wrong on a fundamental human level. We want justice for Romeo. We want someone to answer for what was done to him. That impulse is human and understandable and, frankly, appropriate.
But "wrong" and "provable beyond a reasonable doubt" are not the same thing. The system's protections exist precisely because our desire for accountability can overwhelm our commitment to accuracy. History is full of wrongful convictions in child death cases, people sent to prison for life because juries couldn't stand the thought of a dead child going unavenged, because prosecutors presented theories that seemed plausible in the moment but later proved false. The only thing worse than a child's death going unpunished is an innocent person being punished for a crime they didn't commit while the actual perpetrator goes free.
My father understood this better than most. Steven M. Askin spent 23 years as a criminal defense attorney in West Virginia, representing people the system had already decided were guilty. He was held in contempt of court, indicted, and imprisoned for refusing to testify against his own clients when federal agents had violated the Fourth Amendment to obtain the information they wanted. He was criminally convicted a second time, years later, for helping people understand their constitutional rights from a coffee shop, for teaching them how to defend themselves in a system designed to crush them. He knew what it felt like to be in the crosshairs of a system that had already made up its mind.
Trinity Poague is entitled to every protection my father fought for. The presumption of innocence, which means the jury must begin this trial believing she is not guilty. The requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which means suspicion and probability are not enough. The right to confront her accusers and challenge the evidence against her. The right to have her guilt determined by evidence, not by the horror of what happened to a child, not by the emotional weight of a dead toddler's photos, not by the natural human desire to hold someone accountable.
Day 1 showed exactly why these protections matter. The State presented a circumstantial case built on text messages expressing resentment and a 35-minute timeline of opportunity. The defense showed that investigators threw away potentially exculpatory evidence, failed to thoroughly investigate the victim's own father, collected almost nothing from a crime scene that showed no signs of violence, and built their case on assumptions rather than proof. If Trinity Poague is convicted at the end of this trial, it will be despite these gaps in the evidence, not because the prosecution has filled them.
The burden of proof means the State must fill those gaps. Not with speculation about what Trinity's text messages reveal about her character. Not with inferences about consciousness of guilt based on how she reacted to someone mentioning murder charges. Not with emotional appeals about a dead baby who deserves justice. With actual evidence that proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Trinity Madison Poague is the one who killed Romeo Angeles. Whether they can do that remains to be seen.
This trial is about more than Trinity Poague and Romeo Angeles. It's about how our criminal justice system handles cases where the evidence doesn't match the horror of the alleged crime, where the emotional stakes are so high that the pressure to convict someone, anyone, becomes almost unbearable.
Child death cases are among the most emotionally charged matters any jury can consider. The natural human impulse when confronted with a dead child is to punish someone, to hold someone accountable, to ensure that such a terrible loss has consequences. That impulse is understandable. It may even be appropriate in some cosmic sense. But it's also dangerous in a courtroom, because it can lead juries to convict based on emotion rather than evidence, to fill evidentiary gaps with assumptions, to choose the most satisfying narrative rather than the most proven one.
The prosecution in this case is counting on that emotional response to some degree. They know the jury will eventually see autopsy photos of an 18-month-old with a fractured skull. They know medical testimony will describe in clinical detail the kind of force required to cause such injuries. They know jurors will look at those photos and hear that testimony and want desperately to hold someone responsible. The prosecution's job is to channel that emotional energy toward Trinity Poague, to convince the jury that their desire for accountability and the evidence pointing to the defendant are one and the same thing.
The defense is counting on something different: jurors' ability to set emotion aside and evaluate the evidence objectively. They need at least one juror, preferably twelve, who can look at the lack of physical evidence, the discarded diapers, the barely-investigated father, and say: this isn't enough. Not in a case where someone's entire life hangs in the balance. Not when the standard is proof beyond reasonable doubt. Not when the alternative is sending a potentially innocent woman to prison forever while the actual perpetrator walks free.
Both sides are making calculated bets about human nature, about what jurors will prioritize when emotion and evidence pull in different directions. The prosecution bets that jurors will ultimately convict because they can't stand the thought of a dead child going unavenged, because the alternative, acquittal, feels like a betrayal of Romeo Angeles. The defense bets that jurors will ultimately acquit because they can't stand the thought of sending an innocent woman to prison, because the gaps in the State's case are too large to ignore, because reasonable doubt is not a technicality but a sacred protection.
We won't know who wins that bet until the verdict comes in. But Day 1 established the terms of the wager with unusual clarity. This is a case where the State's theory is plausible but the evidence is thin. Where the defendant's alternative explanation is also plausible. Where reasonable minds could genuinely differ on what happened in that dormitory room. That's the textbook definition of reasonable doubt. And if that doubt persists through the rest of this trial, through the medical testimony and the forensic evidence and the closing arguments, Trinity Poague should walk free regardless of what anyone believes actually happened.
The prosecution has two critical tasks ahead of them. First, they must present medical testimony establishing that Romeo's fatal injuries could only have occurred during the 35-minute window when Trinity was alone with the child. If there's any possibility those injuries happened earlier, perhaps during the Saturday night fall from the air mattress, perhaps at some point when Julian was present, perhaps during the drive from Albany to Americus, the timeline theory collapses. The defense will attack the medical testimony aggressively, looking for any ambiguity about timing, any possibility that the injuries pre-dated Trinity's window of opportunity.
Second, the prosecution must explain away the absence of physical evidence at the crime scene. Their theory is that Trinity beat this child with enough force to fracture his skull and lacerate his liver. Beatings leave evidence. Blood spatters. Signs of struggle. Traces of violence. Where is any of that? The prosecution needs a compelling explanation for why a violent assault in a small dormitory room left absolutely nothing behind, why the crime scene specialist found the room unremarkable, why no weapon was ever recovered, why no blood was detected even with standard investigative techniques.
The defense, meanwhile, needs to keep doing exactly what they did on Day 1. Keep questioning Julian Williams' credibility and parenting. Keep emphasizing the investigation's failures and blind spots. Keep reminding the jury that evidence was discarded, that the father was barely investigated, that the crime scene looked like nothing happened there. Keep building the picture of an alternative suspect, an alternative explanation, an alternative narrative that the jury can choose if they find the prosecution's case unconvincing.
The medical evidence will be the fulcrum on which this case turns. If the doctors are credible and their testimony about injury timing is airtight, if they can establish with scientific certainty that Romeo's fatal injuries occurred during those 35 minutes and could not have occurred earlier, the prosecution's case becomes much stronger. But if the defense can create any doubt about when those injuries were inflicted, any possibility that they pre-dated Trinity's window of opportunity, the entire theory falls apart. The prosecution would be left with text messages and suspicious behavior, circumstantial evidence that might support suspicion but cannot support conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
The prosecution has more witnesses to call, and several of them will be crucial to understanding how this case will ultimately resolve.
Dr. Busman, the emergency room physician who treated Romeo at Phoebe Sumter Hospital, will likely testify about what he observed when the child arrived. His observations about the nature and freshness of the injuries will be important. But equally important will be what Julian Williams told him in those chaotic first minutes. Hospital records apparently document Julian saying the child fell five minutes before arrival. Julian denies saying that. Dr. Busman can clarify what was actually communicated, and any inconsistency between Julian's trial testimony and his contemporaneous statements could be significant.
The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy will be the most critical witness for both sides. This expert will establish the official cause of death, describe the internal injuries in clinical detail, and most importantly, testify about timing. How fresh were the hemorrhages? How recent was the skull fracture? Can medical science pinpoint when these injuries occurred with enough precision to support the prosecution's 35-minute timeline? The defense will challenge every conclusion, pressing for any ambiguity, any possibility that the injuries could have occurred outside that window.
Paris Permore, Trinity's roommate who received the damaging text messages about hating the child, will likely testify at some point. Those texts are the prosecution's best evidence of motive. But Permore may have other observations too, things she saw about Trinity's behavior with the child, about Julian's behavior, about the dynamics of the relationship. Her testimony could cut either way.
Ashanti Burr, Julian's sister and Romeo's primary day-to-day caregiver, may also testify. If she does, the defense will ask about Julian's parenting, about how much time he actually spent with the child, about the child's medical history, about any concerns she might have had. The prosecution will try to establish through Ashanti that Romeo was healthy and happy until that January weekend, that nothing in the child's history suggested prior abuse or injury.
The defense raised the specter of GBI Agent Samantha Fort during the motions hearing. Fort apparently interviewed Trinity Poague after the child's death. What Trinity said in that interview could be crucial. Did she maintain her innocence? Did she give a consistent account of what happened? Did she say anything that incriminates her or exculpates her? Whether those statements come into evidence, and how the jury interprets them, could significantly affect the outcome.
Watch the jury throughout all of this. Twelve people are sitting in that box trying to figure out whether the State has proven its case. Their reactions to testimony, to evidence, to the competing narratives, will tell us something about where this trial is headed. Do they lean forward when the prosecution presents evidence, or when the defense attacks it? Do they seem sympathetic to Julian Williams, or skeptical of him? Do they look at Trinity Poague like a defendant or like a victim? Jury-watching is imprecise, but it offers clues about how deliberations might ultimately go.
I've given you the facts as they were presented on Day 1 of this trial. I've walked you through the prosecution's theory and the defense's counter-narrative. I've shown you the evidence that exists and, equally important, the evidence that doesn't. Now I want to hear from you.
Based on what you've seen so far, could you vote to convict Trinity Poague of murder?
I'm not asking whether you think she did it. Suspicion is not the standard. I'm not asking whether you find the prosecution's theory plausible. Plausibility is not the standard either. I'm asking whether you could vote to convict, knowing that your vote would send this young woman to prison for the rest of her natural life, knowing that the burden of proof requires certainty beyond reasonable doubt, knowing that you would have to live with that decision forever.
Could you look at the lack of physical evidence in that dormitory room and still feel certain? Could you acknowledge that investigators threw potentially exculpatory evidence in a dumpster and still feel certain? Could you watch Julian Williams' cross-examination, all the questions about his parenting and his drinking and his possibly conflicting stories, and still feel certain that Trinity, not Julian, is responsible for Romeo's death?
Or does reasonable doubt stop you? Does the pristine crime scene bother you? Does the discarded diaper that might have contained blood gnaw at you? Does Julian Williams' failure to take his child to a doctor even once raise questions you can't answer?
Go back and watch the prosecution describe those text messages. Then watch the defense call Trinity a second victim. Then watch the crime scene specialist admit he found no evidence of violence. Then watch Julian Williams admit he never took his son to a doctor. Sit with all of it. Let it settle.
Ask yourself: What do I believe? And more importantly: What can I prove?
That's what it means to think like a juror. That's what it means to take the presumption of innocence seriously. That's the question twelve people in Americus, Georgia will eventually have to answer when closing arguments are finished and the jury room door closes behind them.
The answer is not obvious. If it were, this case would have ended with a plea deal, not a trial. Someone thought there was enough evidence to prosecute Trinity Poague. Someone else thought there was enough doubt to take this to a jury. Both of those someones are lawyers who do this for a living. The fact that they disagree so fundamentally tells you everything you need to know about how difficult this case really is.
Tell me what you think. Leave a comment. Engage with the coverage. Ask questions. Push back on my analysis if you disagree with it. This is how we watch the system together. This is how we hold it accountable. This is how we honor the process that exists to protect everyone, even people accused of the worst crimes imaginable.
Because justice is a process. The process is what separates us from systems where accusations equal convictions, where trials are formalities, where the outcome is predetermined before the first witness takes the stand. The process is messy and slow and sometimes frustrating. It produces outcomes that feel wrong. It lets guilty people go free sometimes. But it also protects innocent people from being destroyed by a system that has already made up its mind.
Trinity Poague is either a murderer or a scapegoat. Right now, after Day 1, I genuinely don't know which. And maybe that uncertainty, that honest acknowledgment that the evidence so far doesn't point clearly in either direction, is exactly what reasonable doubt looks like.
We'll keep watching. We'll keep asking questions. We'll keep holding the system accountable. That's what this channel exists to do. That's what my father built his entire career around, even when the system came for him twice. The process only works when people are watching. So let's watch together and see where the evidence leads.