Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old. He was learning to walk. He liked watching a children's show called Couturi, something with birds that fascinated him. He drank Mountain Dew from a sippy cup, even late at night when he should have been sleeping. His father Julian Williams called him JD, short for Jaxton Drew, the name Julian gave him even though it wasn't on the birth certificate.
On the morning of January 14, 2024, Romeo was sitting in a pink chair in a college dormitory room in Americus, Georgia, eating Fritos and watching his bird show on a small television perched on a mini-fridge. His father kissed him goodbye and walked out the door to pick up a pizza and grab a few things from Walmart. Thirty-five minutes later, Julian Williams was racing back to that dormitory, his dying son limp in his arms, blood and foam coming from the baby's nose, the child vomiting on his father's black Nike jacket as Julian ran.
That jacket still hangs in Julian Williams' closet. He has never washed it. When the prosecutor asked him why, Julian gave an answer that will stay with everyone who heard it: "Because that's the last thing I got to remember."
Day 2 of the Trinity Poague murder trial was the day the medical evidence arrived. And it arrived with the force of a verdict.
Trinity Madison Poague is nineteen years old now. She was eighteen when she was alone with Romeo for those thirty-five minutes on January 14, 2024. She's a former Miss Donalsonville, a Jimmy Carter Leadership Program scholar at Georgia Southwestern State University, a nursing student with honors from a college preparatory school. She sits in a Sumter County courtroom facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and cruelty to children. If convicted, she will spend the rest of her life in prison.
The prosecution's theory is simple: during those thirty-five minutes when Julian Williams was gone, Trinity Poague beat his eighteen-month-old son so severely that she fractured his skull, lacerated his liver, and caused catastrophic bleeding in his brain. The child who was eating chips and watching cartoons when his father left was unconscious and dying when his father returned.
The defense has a different theory. They point to Julian Williams himself. They note that he was drinking rum that weekend, that he never took his son to a doctor in over a year of custody, that he told investigators conflicting stories about what happened, that his hands were never examined or photographed by law enforcement. They argue that the investigation was a rush to judgment, that police focused on the young girlfriend and never seriously considered that the child's own father might be responsible.
Day 2 was supposed to settle which theory holds water. By the time the last witness stepped down, the medical evidence had painted a picture so specific, so clinically devastating, that the defense's alternative theory was hanging by threads.
But threads don't break easily in a courtroom. And reasonable doubt only requires one thread to hold.
Let me tell you what happened.
The courtroom was full on Day 2. Family members sat in the gallery. Journalists took notes. The jury watched from their box, twelve citizens who will ultimately decide whether Trinity Poague spends the rest of her life in prison. The stakes in this room could not be higher. For Romeo Angeles, who cannot speak for himself. For Julian Williams, who lost his son and has been painted by the defense as a potential suspect. For Trinity Poague, whose entire future depends on what these twelve people conclude.
The morning began with Julian Williams back on the stand. He had been savaged during cross-examination the day before, defense attorney T. Gamble portraying him as a controlling boyfriend who was drinking while his son was in the car, who demanded his girlfriend's social media passwords, who never once took his child to a pediatrician. Now the prosecution had a chance to rehabilitate their witness.
The prosecutor showed the jury photographs from a police officer's body camera. Julian identified himself in the images, wearing his black Nike tech suit. The prosecutor asked him to step down and show the jury where on the jacket Romeo had vomited on him, that yellowish-white stain on the front and inside the collar, the biological evidence of his son's final conscious moments.
Then came the question that would echo through the rest of the day: had anyone asked Julian to turn over the jacket so it could be tested? No. Would he have given it to them if they asked? Yes. He still has it. He has never cleaned it. Because that's all he has left.
There was a moment in the courtroom when Julian Williams held that jacket and showed the jury the stain. You could see the grief on his face. You could see the weight of what he was carrying. This was not just evidence. This was his son's last mark on the world, preserved on a piece of clothing that any other person would have washed or thrown away months ago. The fact that he kept it unwashed tells you something about the depth of his loss. It also tells you something about the investigation: that stain, that biological evidence of Romeo's final conscious moments, was never tested. No one asked for the jacket. No one collected it. No one analyzed what might be in that vomit.
Defense attorney Gamble rose for recross-examination and drove straight at the investigative failures. Did anyone look at Julian's hands? No. Did anyone photograph his hands? No one asked him to show his hands to the GBI agents. Not that he recalls. No photographs taken by anyone. Not that he knows of.
The testimony lasted four minutes. Julian Williams was excused. But those four minutes established something the defense would hammer for the rest of the trial: if investigators believed Romeo was beaten to death, why didn't they examine the hands of the other adult who was present that weekend? Why didn't they collect the jacket with biological evidence? Why did they photograph diapers and then throw them back in the dumpster, where they were lost forever?
The defense is building a case that the investigation was so focused on Trinity Poague that it failed to rule out Julian Williams. And every investigative gap they expose is another brick in that wall.
But then the doctors took the stand. And the wall started to crumble.
Dr. Michael Busman has been practicing medicine for thirty years. He graduated from Emory, went to medical school at the Medical University of South Carolina, did his residency in Columbus, Georgia, and has been working in Americus since 1998. He's board certified in family medicine. He works in the emergency room at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center a few days a month. He was working on January 14, 2024, when a young man came running through the doors carrying a baby who wasn't breathing.
Dr. Busman described what he saw: a child who was completely unresponsive, no breathing, no heartbeat. The nurses had already started CPR. He explained to the jury how you perform CPR on an infant: not with your whole hand like you would on an adult, but with just two fingers, pressing gently on the small chest above the heart. They had to intubate the child, putting a breathing tube directly into his trachea to get oxygen to his lungs. They gave him epinephrine, one dose after another, until finally they got a heartbeat back.
But getting a heartbeat back is not the same as saving a life.
Once they had Romeo stabilized enough to examine him, Dr. Busman started cataloging the injuries. There was swelling and bruising on the face. There was something that looked almost like a facial deformity at first, but turned out to be dried secretions around the nose. And then there was the back of the head: really, really swollen, with fluid collecting underneath, a bulge about the size of Dr. Busman held up his hand to show the jury.
They ordered a CT scan. What they found was catastrophic: a massive fracture of the occipital bone at the back of the skull, extending to the parietal bone on the side. And bleeding. Bleeding everywhere inside that small head.
The prosecutor asked the question that would define the day: how long after suffering that injury would a child start showing symptoms?
"Pretty immediate," Dr. Busman said. "That kind of trauma, it would happen really quickly. Wouldn't be acting normal literally within seconds after it happened."
And unconsciousness? How long before the child would become unconscious?
"Thirty to sixty minutes with the extent of that trauma."
The prosecutor pressed further. Was there any reasonable possibility that the child suffered that skull fracture the night before he came to the hospital?
"No, that's highly unlikely. I think symptoms would have developed a lot sooner."
What about the scenario the defense had suggested: that the child was injured Saturday night, but then sat up normally, held a cup, drank from it, played, watched TV, went to sleep for eight or nine hours, woke up, behaved normally for another hour, and then suddenly collapsed? Was that possible with this injury?
"No, not going to happen there. Right after the fall, he may not go unconscious right away, but he's not going to be behaving normal with that extent of trauma. It's going to be abnormal. It's going to get progressively worse."
Dr. Busman wasn't done. There was another injury, one that had nothing to do with the head. The child's liver enzymes were through the roof. The AST was over 8,000; normal is about 40. The ALT was over 5,000. Something had happened to this child's liver.
The CT scan showed a liver laceration. The liver was torn. And unlike the brain injury, where blood could have been slowly accumulating, the liver injury had a telltale sign: the bilirubin was normal. If the liver injury had been chronic, if it had happened days before, the bilirubin would have been elevated. The fact that it was normal meant this was a fresh injury, something that had happened recently.
The prosecutor walked Dr. Busman through the physics of what they were seeing. Could one blow cause both the skull fracture at the back of the head and the liver laceration at the front of the body? No. The occipital bone is at the back; the liver is at the front. "It would definitely have to be two different blows."
What about the bruising on the face? Could that have come from the same impact that fractured the back of the skull? "Likely not." Unless, Dr. Busman said, the head somehow fell into a rounded hole where it could hit both the front and the back simultaneously. "But not likely."
And what about a fall from a bed? Could falling off a bed cause all of these injuries?
"No. Possibly a small bruise to the face, but not a liver laceration and not a skull fracture."
What about falling from a chair thirteen inches off the floor?
"Maybe some bruising, but I can't see how they would fracture a liver, and certainly would not hit the back of the head if falling forward."
The defense had a strategy for Dr. Busman, and it centered on something that had been photographed but never tested: a diaper with what appeared to be blood in the fecal matter. Defense attorney Gamble showed Dr. Busman an exhibit photograph of three diapers, one of which had visible red discoloration in the stool.
Dr. Busman agreed it looked like blood. He explained that a hemocult test, a simple fecal occult blood test, could have confirmed whether it was blood. It's not a complicated test. They have home versions. The defense's point was clear: here was potential evidence of an earlier injury, evidence that was photographed and then thrown in the garbage, evidence that could have told investigators something about this child's condition before that Sunday morning.
This is where the investigation failures the defense has been highlighting become more than abstract complaints about procedure. If there was blood in Romeo's stool, it could indicate internal bleeding that predated Sunday morning. It could suggest the child was already injured before the thirty-five-minute window the prosecution is focused on. It could point to Julian Williams as much as Trinity Poague. But we will never know. The diapers were photographed by GBI crime scene investigator James Gibson, and then placed back in the dumpster. The garbage was collected. The evidence is gone. A simple test that could have told us whether this child was bleeding internally before Sunday morning will never be performed.
Dr. Busman explained that the liver does not connect directly to the colon, so bleeding around the liver would not necessarily show up in the feces. But he acknowledged that if there was internal bleeding somewhere in the digestive tract, that could appear in the stool. And he acknowledged that we simply do not know what caused the discoloration in that diaper because no one tested it. The prosecution would later argue, through Dr. Clark's autopsy testimony, that there was no injury to Romeo's intestines or colon that would explain bloody stool. But the defense had planted a seed: evidence that might have mattered was lost through investigator negligence.
The defense also established that CPR, if performed incorrectly, can sometimes cause liver lacerations. Dr. Busman acknowledged the possibility, somewhere between one and eleven percent depending on which studies you read. But he said the injury he saw was in the wrong place for CPR to have caused it. CPR injuries typically affect the left side of the liver, right under the sternum where you press. This laceration was on the right side of the liver, in the back area. "I would say very unlikely."
And then the defense tried to create some wiggle room in the timeline. Falls can kill children, can't they? Yes. Falls from not particularly tall heights, sometimes just two or three feet? It's possible. Children's bones are more pliable, but they can break. Falls are one of the leading causes of accidental death in young children, aren't they? Yes, Dr. Busman agreed. They are.
But the defense couldn't change the fundamental testimony: this child's injuries were so severe that he would have shown symptoms within seconds, would have been unconscious within thirty to sixty minutes. The prosecution's timeline, the thirty-five-minute window when Trinity was alone with Romeo, fit the medical evidence. The defense's timeline, an injury Saturday night that didn't manifest until Sunday afternoon, did not.
Dr. Jill Olek took over Romeo's care at noon on January 14, 2024. She was working a six-hour shift at Phoebe Sumter when she received the report from Dr. Busman. She knew immediately the child was critical. She went straight to the room to see for herself.
What she saw confirmed everything Dr. Busman had described, and added details that would haunt the courtroom. There was a large bruise on the left side of the child's face, and it had a distinctive pattern. "It looked like there were fingerprints or something along the line of a hand," Dr. Olek testified. There were multiple bruises on the forehead, on the right side of the skull. There was that massive swelling at the back of the head.
And there was something else, something that told Dr. Olek this child's brain was catastrophically damaged. Pink frothy liquid was coming out of Romeo's nose. Dr. Olek explained what that meant: cerebral spinal fluid, the liquid that protects the brain and spine, was leaking out through the nose. When there's significant head trauma, that fluid can break through and escape. It's a sign of devastating injury.
The prosecutor asked Dr. Olek the same question he had asked Dr. Busman: could these injuries have occurred the night before? Could the child have been hurt Saturday night and then behaved normally until Sunday afternoon?
"With the degree of bleeding that is present, I would not expect him to wake up," Dr. Olek said. If the injury happened the night before, the child would not have woken up the next morning acting normally. He would not have been eating chips and watching cartoons. He would have been unconscious or dead.
The prosecutor pressed further. What was the likelihood that after receiving these injuries, the child could have been sitting up, eating, exercising fine motor skills like holding a cup, watching TV, not crying?
"The amount of bleeding that was present within the brain," Dr. Olek said, "there is a zero percent chance that this child can be normal. He would have had some type of symptom."
Zero percent. Not unlikely. Not improbable. Zero.
That phrase landed differently in the courtroom than other medical testimony. Doctors are usually careful with absolutes. They say "in my opinion" and "to a reasonable degree of medical certainty" and "it is unlikely." They hedge. They acknowledge that medicine is not an exact science. But Dr. Olek did not hedge. She looked at the bleeding in Romeo's brain, she looked at the timing the defense was suggesting, and she said there was no chance. None.
Think about what that means for the defense's theory. They want the jury to believe that Romeo was injured Saturday night, that he fell from a bed or was dropped or was struck by Julian Williams, and then somehow woke up the next morning behaving normally. He sat in a pink chair. He ate Fritos. He watched his bird show. He held a sippy cup. And then, hours later, he suddenly collapsed.
Dr. Olek said that is impossible. Zero percent chance.
Why did this baby die? the prosecutor asked.
"This baby died as a result of massive head trauma."
The defense tried to shake Dr. Olek's testimony. Gamble questioned whether she was qualified to give expert opinions on causation, noting she had never testified as an expert on determining causes of injuries and death. The judge ultimately allowed her testimony, finding she had sufficient expertise as a practicing physician.
Gamble asked about the liver laceration and CPR. Dr. Olek was more emphatic than Dr. Busman had been. She said the medical literature suggests the risk of liver laceration from CPR is less than one percent, probably closer to 0.5 percent, and that such injuries typically occur on the left side of the liver. The laceration in this case was on the right side, "nowhere near where we would have been doing CPR."
This is an important point that deserves explanation. When you perform CPR, you press on the sternum, the bone in the center of the chest. That pressure compresses the heart and can, in rare cases, damage surrounding organs. But the liver sits mostly on the right side of the body, tucked under the ribs. The left lobe of the liver extends toward the center and is the part most vulnerable to CPR-related injury. Romeo's laceration was on the right lobe, the part of the liver furthest from where CPR compressions would be applied. The anatomy simply does not support the suggestion that CPR caused this injury.
Had Dr. Olek watched the CPR being performed? Yes. Would she have intervened if it was being done wrong? "One hundred percent yes. We're a team and we always make sure that we are doing things properly."
Was there any chance, zero percent chance, that this liver injury was caused by CPR?
"There was zero percent chance this was secondary to CPR."
The defense asked about child skull development, about sutures that haven't fully fused, about whether a child's skull is more vulnerable than an adult's. Dr. Olek acknowledged she wasn't certain about specific timeframes for suture development. But she was certain about something else: this child's injuries required multiple impacts. The bruising on the front of the head and the fracture at the back could not have come from the same fall. "There is no way you could have an injury in the front that would cause that into the back. It had to have been a direct blow to the posterior skull."
Dr. Anthony Clark has performed more than 8,100 autopsies in his career. He graduated from MIT, went to Jefferson Medical College, did surgical training in Connecticut, pathology training in Hartford, and a forensic pathology fellowship at the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in association with Emory University. He is board certified in both anatomic and forensic pathology. He has testified as an expert several hundred times in Georgia courts, several hundred more times elsewhere. He currently works as an associate medical examiner for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
When Dr. Clark walked to the witness stand, the jury was looking at the person who would tell them, in clinical detail, exactly what happened inside Romeo Angeles' body. Dr. Busman and Dr. Olek had treated the child while he was still alive, fighting to save him. Dr. Clark examined him after he died, documenting every injury, every bruise, every fracture, every hemorrhage. His testimony would be the most detailed, the most graphic, and the most important of the day.
On January 17, 2024, three days after Romeo died, Dr. Clark performed the autopsy.
The external examination showed a child who appeared well-nourished, well-developed, well-hydrated. His height was 78.7 centimeters; his weight was 11.6 kilograms. Both measurements were in the normal range for an eighteen-month-old. There was no evidence of chronic neglect or starvation. Whatever happened to Romeo happened to a healthy child.
But that healthy child had injuries covering his head. There were bruises on the right forehead, three of them. There was a crusted abrasion that looked like it was starting to heal. On the left side of the head, fresher abrasions. On the left cheek, a pattern bruise: two linear marks with an area of sparing between them, the kind of mark you see when fingers make contact with skin and blood squeezes between them. A grip mark. Or a slap mark.
There was bruising under the left jaw, in the mastoid area behind the right ear, and when Dr. Clark touched the back of the head, it felt "boggy," swollen with fluid that shouldn't have been there.
Dr. Clark showed the jury photographs. The prosecution had fought to get post-incision autopsy photos admitted over defense objection. The judge allowed them with a cautionary instruction: these photos show the body after the medical examiner made incisions, not as it appeared externally. The jury should not let the graphic nature affect their judgment.
The photos were devastating nonetheless. They showed what Romeo looked like under the surface: hemorrhages throughout the scalp, blood pooled at the back of the skull, the catastrophic damage that killed him.
But it was the internal examination that told the full story.
When Dr. Clark opened the chest and abdomen, he found hemorrhaging around the right ribs, numbers six through ten, in an unusual location, not where you would expect CPR injuries. "Usually with bad CPR, you see it on both sides," Dr. Clark explained. "They'll break symmetrically." This was different. This was one-sided, lateral, suggesting a blow rather than compression.
The liver was worse than the CT scans had suggested. "The right lobe was basically essentially crushed," Dr. Clark said. There was bleeding into the abdominal cavity, but also bleeding into what Dr. Clark called the retroperitoneal space, the area behind the abdominal organs. That bleeding told him something important: the child had to have had a blood pressure when the injury occurred. The blood was pushed into tissues that normally have nothing in them. You need circulation to push blood. CPR patients don't have circulation; that's why you're doing CPR.
And there was something else, something Dr. Clark said he had never seen from CPR: the right adrenal gland was torn. The adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys, deep in the body. To tear one requires massive force. "I've never seen that in CPR or even bad CPR."
What kind of force would cause this liver injury, Dr. Clark was asked. "A car accident would be a very common thing to see." The same level of force that you might see from a car accident. That's what it took to do this to an eighteen-month-old's liver.
The prosecutor asked whether a single blow could have caused both the liver laceration and the rib hemorrhages. "It's a possibility. A couple of hard blows to the area."
And the head? Dr. Clark described the skull fracture: a full-thickness fracture of the occipital bone extending down to the foramen magnum, the opening at the base of the skull where the spinal cord connects to the brain. The lambdoidal sutures, where the occipital bone connects to the parietal bones, had been separated by force, what Dr. Clark called a diastatic fracture. Blood had pooled in spaces that should be empty.
The brain itself had suffered multiple hemorrhages: epidural hemorrhages between the bone and the dura, subdural hemorrhages beneath the dura, subarachnoid hemorrhages on the surface of the brain. "This is where you got your skull," Dr. Clark said, using his hands to demonstrate, "you got your dura, and then you got a potential space called the subdural space, and then the brain. Well, the brain has been impacted and injured, causing it to kind of slosh back and forth, causing tearing of the subdural bridging veins."
The prosecutor asked the question that would frame the rest of the trial: how long after the injury would symptoms appear?
"I would expect the symptoms will be coming in seconds, at most minutes," Dr. Clark said. "The child would get that kind of deer-in-the-headlights look. Maybe start to vomit, stagger around, maybe even start to have a little bit of seizure activity. Not protecting their airway. At that point in time, they're not going to be eating or drinking. They're not going to be able to be social. They're not going to be able to move around on their own."
Seconds. Not hours. Seconds.
Could these injuries have occurred the night before and not been noticed until the next afternoon?
"I find that very unlikely."
Could a child roll off an air mattress eight or ten inches off the floor and suffer these injuries?
"No, sir."
Could a child fall from a forty-inch bed and suffer these injuries?
"No, sir."
Could a child fall from a thirteen-inch chair and suffer these injuries?
"No, sir."
What was the difference between accidental trauma and inflicted trauma?
Dr. Clark explained: when children fall, they might get a bruise, maybe a bump. Sometimes they can get a skull fracture, but usually it's a simple linear fracture that doesn't cause brain injury. The skull absorbs the force. But this wasn't that. This was multiple impacts to multiple areas of the head. This was a liver so damaged it looked like a car accident victim. This was an adrenal gland torn apart.
"When I see something like this, this to me appears to be inflicted," Dr. Clark said. "Meaning the kid is either hit with something on the back of the head or picked up, small enough to be picked up, and slammed against something. A hard surface, a chair, a top of a table or something like that."
The occipital bone, the bone that was fractured, is thicker than the temporal bones on the sides of the head. It takes more force to break it. And the location of the fracture was significant: when you fall backward, your shoulders and the crown of your head typically absorb some of the impact. The forces are distributed. But this fracture suggested a direct, focused blow to the back of the skull.
Do you have an opinion, the prosecutor asked, as to why this child died?
"I felt it was due to abusive head trauma."
Those four words landed in the courtroom like a physical weight. Abusive head trauma. Not accidental injury. Not the result of a fall. Abuse. Intentional violence against an eighteen-month-old child.
Dr. Clark wasn't guessing. He wasn't speculating. He was applying more than thirty years of forensic pathology experience to the evidence in front of him. The pattern of injuries, the severity of damage, the locations of trauma, all pointed to one conclusion. This child was not the victim of an accident. This child was beaten.
Do you have an opinion as to the time between infliction of trauma and onset of symptoms?
"In my opinion, seconds to minutes after the trauma occurred."
The defense cross-examination of Dr. Clark was careful and strategic. Gamble couldn't dispute the injuries; he couldn't argue with the autopsy findings. Instead, he focused on what Dr. Clark couldn't know: who did this.
Dr. Clark agreed he didn't know who caused the injuries. He wasn't there when it happened. He could only describe what he found. He couldn't say which specific person was responsible.
Gamble also established that some of the bruises could have come from rough play, from normal toddler activity, from bumping into things. Dr. Clark agreed that was possible for the minor bruises, though he noted they were concerning given everything else he found.
The defense brought up the pattern bruising on the cheek. Could those marks have been caused by someone grabbing the child's face, trying to wake him up, checking if he was okay? Dr. Clark acknowledged that was a possibility.
And then Gamble went to medical literature. He asked Dr. Clark about Dr. Mary Case, a well-known forensic pathologist from St. Louis. Dr. Clark knew her; he had attended seminars she conducted. Gamble showed him an article Dr. Case had written about accidental traumatic head injury in infants and young children.
The article included case examples of children who died from falls, sometimes from surprisingly short heights. A twenty-one-month-old male who fell out of bed, cried, was comforted, vomited, was put back to bed, and was found dead the next morning. A four-month-old who fell from an adult bed and struck the edge of a bedside table, had a CT scan read as normal, survived two days, and died on the way to the pediatrician. A seven-year-old who fell off a tree stump about three feet high, complained of a headache, vomited over twelve hours, and was found dead the next morning.
Dr. Clark acknowledged these cases existed. Falls can be fatal. But he noted a crucial distinction: the cases Dr. Case described involved epidural hemorrhages, bleeding between the skull and the dura. Those hemorrhages can have a delayed presentation because they build pressure slowly. But Romeo had more than just epidural hemorrhages. He had subdural hemorrhages, subarachnoid hemorrhages, diffuse brain injury. "We're comparing apples and oranges," Dr. Clark said.
And the fractures in Dr. Case's examples were simple linear fractures of thinner bones, the temporal and parietal regions. Romeo's fracture was through the occipital bone, one of the thickest bones in the skull, requiring "more focal and forced" impact.
The defense had scored some points. Falls can kill children. Medical literature documents cases of delayed death from falls. The medical examiner can't say who caused the injuries. But the core of Dr. Clark's testimony stood: this child's injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall, they would have caused immediate symptoms, and they appeared to be the result of inflicted trauma.
There is something worth understanding about the medical debate that played out during Dr. Clark's cross-examination. The defense was not trying to argue that Romeo's injuries were minor or that he died from natural causes. They were trying to create uncertainty about timing. If the injuries could have occurred earlier, if there was any window where Julian Williams was alone with the child and could have caused the damage, then the defense has reasonable doubt.
But Dr. Clark drew a clear line. The cases in Dr. Mary Case's article involved epidural hemorrhages, which occur between the skull and the dura mater, the outermost membrane covering the brain. These hemorrhages typically come from arterial bleeding and can build pressure slowly, allowing for a lucid interval where the child appears normal before suddenly deteriorating. Romeo had something different: subdural and subarachnoid hemorrhages, which occur in the spaces closer to the brain itself. These hemorrhages cause immediate symptoms because they directly compress brain tissue.
The distinction matters enormously for this case. An epidural hemorrhage might allow a child to appear normal for hours after an injury. A subdural hemorrhage with the severity Romeo suffered would not. That is why Dr. Clark, Dr. Olek, and Dr. Busman all agreed: this child could not have been eating chips and watching cartoons if he had been injured the night before.
The last witness of Day 2 brought the jury back from clinical medicine to human drama. Paris Permore was Trinity Poague's roommate at Georgia Southwestern. They had met through a Facebook group for incoming freshmen, became friends before school started, chose each other as suitemates. Paris was there for the entire fall semester. She watched Trinity's relationship with Julian Williams. She met Romeo when Julian brought him to the dorm. And she received the text messages that would become some of the most damaging evidence in the case.
Paris described Trinity and Julian's relationship as "very rocky." On again, off again. Trinity complained about the relationship, though Paris couldn't recall specific complaints about things Julian did. The complicating factor was clear: Julian had a child with someone else, and Trinity struggled with that.
The text messages started in August 2023, just weeks after Trinity started college. On August 17, Trinity texted Paris late at night: "Why do I feel anger towards JD? Like earlier when we were in bed and JD kept touching Jay's face, I almost cried."
Paris asked what she meant.
Paris read that text to the jury. "LMFAO" stands for "laughing my fucking ass off." Trinity was joking. Or she was expressing something darker.
The messages continued. Trinity complained that Julian wasn't touching her since the child arrived. She said she was "starting to realize that I can't be with someone who doesn't have my kids." She forwarded Paris a message she had sent to Julian: "I've told you from the beginning that I would always try to love JD as the same as mine. But since me and you have gotten serious, every time I see him, I just get angry at the world and I just have a gut feeling of anger."
Paris testified that Trinity would sometimes express her anger more explicitly. "She would say such things as I would want to run him over with my car." When did she say that? November 2023, just two months before Romeo died.
In November, Trinity texted Paris again. The child was crying. "I'm just going to sleep in your room. I can't do JD crying that much." Later that night: "I was trying to bathe him and he didn't like the water hitting his face." Paris asked if she sat him right in the line of the shower head. Trinity said no, the water wasn't even getting on him that much. "He's just tired. Maybe he will be good for you, but as soon as I get back, I'm taking his ass home."
Then: "I'm done. I can't do it, Paris. I'm not ready."
Paris had agreed to watch Romeo the next day. She did. She testified that she loved the child, that he was fun to be around, that she would pick him up and try to make him laugh. When asked how JD acted around Trinity, Paris said it depended on whether Trinity and Julian's relationship was going well that day. Was Trinity ever openly hostile to the child? "Not very openly. Maybe in the privacy of the dorm room, but not in a bigger situation."
The night of January 13, 2024, Paris was leaving for work around 10 p.m. She stopped by Trinity's room. Trinity was changing Romeo's diaper. Paris picked him up, held him on her hip, tried to tickle him. He appeared completely normal. No injuries visible. No sign of distress. Paris left for her shift.
Later that night, Trinity texted Paris asking if she could watch TV in Paris's room. She needed a mental break. JD wasn't sleeping and Julian was "knocked out all over the bed." Paris said okay.
Then came the text that would become central to the defense's theory: Trinity told Paris that Julian "just put him beside me and let him roll off the bed."
Paris responded: "WHAT?"
Trinity: "Yep. He's okay."
Paris didn't hear from Trinity again until 12:41 p.m. the next day. "I need you to call me. Jay just took JD to the hospital."
The afternoon unfolded in fragments through text messages. "There's cops everywhere. I have no clue. He was watching TV and when I picked him up he was so weak but he was breathing." Then: "They don't think he will make it." Then: "How the fuck do you get a skull fracture?"
Paris tried to comfort her friend. "You texted me last night and told me he fell. That had to be it."
Trinity's response: "But that was only off the air mattress and the air mattress wasn't that far from the ground."
The defense used Paris's testimony to establish that Trinity never believed she had done anything wrong. When Trinity texted "I didn't do it, Paris. I would never lay my hands on any kids," Paris believed her. Paris texted back: "Trinity, I know that. Everyone will be able to see that."
Paris still believed it when she took the stand. Asked if she interpreted Trinity's "I want to punch him" comments as actual threats, Paris said no. She thought Trinity was venting. Just talking.
But the text messages were in evidence now. A jury would decide whether "I want to punch him" and "I would want to run him over with my car" were just venting, or whether they were windows into something darker.
There's something worth noting about those messages. They span months. From August 2023, when Trinity first expressed anger toward Romeo, through November 2023, when she said she wanted to run him over with her car, to January 2024, when the child died. This wasn't a single moment of frustration. This was a pattern. A pattern of resentment, of anger, of struggling to accept this child's presence in her life.
The defense will argue that everyone vents. Everyone says things they don't mean. College students especially are prone to hyperbole, to dramatic expressions of frustration that don't reflect genuine intent. Paris Permore, who knew Trinity better than almost anyone during this period, didn't think Trinity was capable of hurting the child. She texted "I know you would never do anything like that" without hesitation.
But the prosecution will argue that patterns matter. That someone who expresses violent thoughts about a child for five months, who says she wants to punch him, who says she wants to run him over, who texts "I'm done, I can't do it" just two months before that child ends up dead during the only window when she was alone with him, that's not just venting. That's evidence of a state of mind. That's evidence of motive.
The jury will have to decide which interpretation is correct. They'll have to weigh Paris Permore's belief in her friend against the words Trinity wrote. They'll have to ask themselves whether someone who truly loved a child, who truly had no capacity for violence against him, would express her frustration in those specific terms. "I want to punch him." "I would want to run him over with my car." "I'm done. I can't do it."
Words matter in a courtroom. Especially when the person who wrote them is the only adult who was present when a child suffered fatal injuries.
Day 2 was a day of competing narratives colliding with clinical evidence.
The prosecution's story is straightforward: Trinity Poague resented Romeo Angeles. She resented that he took Julian's attention. She resented being a mother figure to a child who wasn't hers. She expressed violent thoughts about him for months. And during thirty-five minutes when she was alone with him, she beat him so severely that she fractured his skull, lacerated his liver, and caused fatal brain bleeding.
The defense's story is more complex: Julian Williams is the one who should be investigated. He was drinking that weekend. He never took his son to a doctor. He told conflicting stories. His hands were never examined. The diapers that might have shown earlier injury were thrown away. The investigation was a rush to judgment focused on the young girlfriend while ignoring the child's own father.
But medical evidence doesn't care about narratives. Medical evidence says what it says.
And that is both the strength and the limitation of medical evidence in a criminal trial. The doctors can tell you what happened to a body. They can describe the injuries, explain the mechanisms, estimate the timing. But they cannot tell you who did it. They cannot see inside a dorm room. They cannot watch what happened during those thirty-five minutes. They can only examine the results and draw conclusions about what kind of force, what kind of violence, what kind of impact caused what they see.
And what it said on Day 2 was devastating for the defense. Three doctors, with a combined century of medical experience, all testified to the same thing: Romeo's injuries would have caused immediate symptoms. Seconds to minutes. Not hours. Not overnight. The child who was eating chips and watching cartoons when Julian left could not have been injured the night before. The injury happened in that thirty-five-minute window. The only person with Romeo during that window was Trinity Poague.
Think about what the jury heard today. They heard Dr. Busman describe performing CPR with two fingers on a baby who had no pulse, no breath. They heard him explain that symptoms from head trauma this severe would appear within seconds, that unconsciousness would follow within thirty to sixty minutes. They heard him say there was no way this child could have behaved normally if he had been injured the night before.
They heard Dr. Olek describe cerebral spinal fluid leaking from the child's nose, a sign of catastrophic brain damage. They heard her describe fingerprint-like pattern bruises on his face, the kind of marks that come from fingers gripping or striking skin. They heard her say there was a zero percent chance that Romeo could have been normal after suffering these injuries. Zero percent. Not a small chance. Not unlikely. Zero.
They heard Dr. Clark, with more than 8,100 autopsies behind him, describe the crushed liver, the torn adrenal gland, the massive skull fracture extending to the foramen magnum, the pattern bruising consistent with a grip or slap mark. They heard him say this was abusive head trauma. They heard him say symptoms would have appeared in seconds to minutes. They heard him say this level of force was comparable to a car accident.
And they heard Paris Permore read text messages from August through November 2023. I want to punch him. I would want to run him over with my car. I am done. I cannot do it. The jurors will go home tonight with those words in their heads alongside the medical images: a baby who was not breathing, a liver that was crushed, a skull that was fractured, a father who still has an unwashed jacket because that is the last thing he has to remember his son.
The defense tried to create doubt around the edges. Falls can kill children. CPR can cause liver injuries. The pattern bruising on the cheek could have come from someone grabbing the child's face to check on him. The medical examiner does not know who caused the injuries.
But every doctor agreed on the timing. Every doctor agreed the injuries were too severe, too acute, too immediately symptomatic to have occurred the night before. Every doctor agreed that a child with these injuries would not have been sitting in a chair eating Fritos and watching cartoons.
The defense will need to challenge that consensus. They'll need expert witnesses of their own, or they'll need to find cracks in the prosecution's medical testimony. Because right now, the medical evidence points to one window and one person.
This case raises questions that extend far beyond this courtroom.
The first question is about the investigation itself. The defense has documented significant gaps: the jacket with biological evidence never collected, Julian Williams' hands never examined or photographed, the diapers with possible blood evidence photographed and then discarded, no luminol testing at the scene. If investigators believed Trinity Poague beat this child to death, why didn't they do more to rule out Julian Williams?
My father would have had a lot to say about that. Steven M. Askin spent his career watching investigations that started with a theory and then gathered evidence to support that theory, rather than following the evidence wherever it led. He saw cases where the police decided who did it and then built a case against that person, ignoring evidence that pointed elsewhere.
That's not how justice is supposed to work. The burden of proof is on the State. The defendant doesn't have to prove anything. But when the State's investigation has holes, when potential suspects weren't ruled out, when evidence was lost or never collected, the defense gets to point at those holes and ask the jury: can you be sure beyond a reasonable doubt?
The second question is about the medical evidence itself. Three doctors testified that Romeo's injuries would have caused immediate symptoms. But medical science isn't always as precise as courtroom testimony makes it sound. Dr. Clark acknowledged that some of Dr. Mary Case's published examples showed children dying from falls after delayed symptoms. The defense will likely bring their own experts who may testify to different possibilities.
Juries have to evaluate competing expert opinions. That's one of the hardest things we ask jurors to do. A doctor with thirty years of experience says one thing. Another doctor with thirty years of experience says something different. Who do you believe? On what basis?
The third question is about the text messages. Trinity Poague wrote "I want to punch him" and "I would want to run him over with my car" about an eighteen-month-old child. Her roommate says it was just venting. The prosecution says it shows her state of mind.
We've all said things we don't mean. We've all expressed frustration in terms we wouldn't want read aloud in a courtroom. Does saying "I want to punch him" mean you would actually punch him? Does it make you capable of murder?
The law is clear that evidence of motive can be considered by the jury. The prosecution doesn't have to prove motive; they only have to prove that the defendant committed the act. But motive helps explain why. And those text messages provide a why: Trinity Poague resented this child, struggled with his presence in her relationship, expressed violent thoughts about him. When he ended up dead during the brief window she was alone with him, those messages become more than venting. They become evidence of a pattern that led to a moment.
Day 1 of this trial belonged to the defense. They established investigative failures, created doubt about Julian Williams, showed that the crime scene yielded no physical evidence of violence. The prosecution's witnesses kept helping the defense.
Day 2 was different. Day 2 was when the medical evidence arrived, and it arrived with the weight of three doctors all saying the same thing: this child was not injured Saturday night. This child was injured during that thirty-five-minute window on Sunday. This child would not have been behaving normally if he had been injured earlier.
The prosecution now has a clear path. Medical evidence establishes timing. The text messages establish motive. The only person present during the critical window was Trinity Poague. That is a case.
But let me be clear about what the prosecution still has to prove. They have to convince twelve jurors, unanimously, that Trinity Poague beat this child so severely that she fractured his skull and lacerated his liver. They have to convince twelve people that an eighteen-year-old nursing student with honors, a Jimmy Carter Leadership Program scholar, a former pageant queen, is capable of that level of violence against a toddler. They have to overcome whatever sympathy the jury might feel for a young woman whose life will be destroyed if they convict her.
The defense does not have to prove anything. They do not have to prove Julian Williams did it. They do not have to prove the injuries were accidental. They do not have to prove Trinity Poague is innocent. They only have to create reasonable doubt. And reasonable doubt can come from many sources: investigative failures, alternative explanations, medical uncertainty, sympathy for the defendant, distrust of the prosecution.
The defense has a harder road. They can point to investigative failures. They can suggest Julian Williams should have been investigated more thoroughly. They can bring their own medical experts to challenge the prosecution's timeline. But they are fighting against a consensus: every medical witness so far has said the same thing about when these injuries occurred.
Trinity Poague is presumed innocent. That presumption is real and meaningful. The State has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But after Day 2, the State's case looks stronger than it did after Day 1.
What happens next will be crucial. Will the defense call medical experts who challenge the prosecution's timeline? Will they put Julian Williams' behavior under closer scrutiny? Will they be able to create enough doubt about when the injuries occurred to give the jury pause?
There is another factor that will shape this trial: emotion. Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old. The autopsy photos are devastating. The description of his injuries is horrific. Jurors are human beings. They will feel things when they hear about a toddler with a crushed liver and a fractured skull. The prosecution does not need to exploit that emotion; it exists naturally in the evidence. The defense has to find a way to channel the jury's focus toward the legal standards, toward reasonable doubt, toward the specific question of whether the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Trinity Poague caused these injuries.
This is what trials are for. We do not know what happened in that dorm room. We were not there. The jury was not there. No one was there except Trinity Poague and an eighteen-month-old child who cannot tell us anything.
The jury has to decide, based on the evidence, whether the State has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the deal we make. That is due process.
As this trial continues, several key issues will shape the outcome:
First, watch for defense medical experts. If the defense can find credible physicians who will testify that Romeo's injuries could have occurred earlier, that could create reasonable doubt. The prosecution's case depends heavily on the timing established by their medical witnesses. Challenge that timing, and you challenge the case. Dr. Clark acknowledged that some published literature documents cases of children dying from falls after delayed symptoms. The defense may bring experts who argue those examples are more applicable to this case than the prosecution's witnesses acknowledged.
Second, watch how the defense handles Julian Williams. They have raised questions about his drinking, his failure to take the child to doctors, his conflicting statements. Will they push harder on the theory that Julian could have caused these injuries? Will they call witnesses to testify about his behavior? The text message that Trinity sent Paris, saying Julian "just put him beside me and let him roll off the bed," is central to the defense narrative. If they can establish that Julian was negligent, that he was drinking, that he was passed out while Trinity cared for the child, they can argue that any of the minor injuries might have occurred on his watch, even if the fatal injury happened later.
Third, watch for Trinity Poague's own statements to investigators. The trial began with motions about what statements the prosecution could use. What did Trinity tell the police? What explanations did she give? Those statements may become important as the trial progresses. Did she maintain a consistent story? Did she blame the fall from the air mattress from the beginning? Did she express shock at the severity of the injuries? The jury will want to know what Trinity said before she had time to think about legal strategies.
Fourth, watch for evidence about the timing of injuries. Dr. Clark noted that one abrasion on Romeo's forehead appeared to be healing, suggesting it occurred before the fatal incident. If there were earlier injuries, who caused them? When did they occur? The defense may argue that a pattern of minor injuries points to someone other than Trinity, someone who had more ongoing contact with the child.
Fifth, watch the jury. This is a case with no eyewitnesses, no confession, no murder weapon. It is built on medical evidence and circumstantial evidence. Juries can convict on circumstantial evidence; the law allows it. But jurors have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Every juror has to believe the State has met its burden. Watch their faces during the medical testimony. Watch how they react to the text messages. Watch whether they seem to accept the prosecution's timeline or whether they appear skeptical.
Romeo Angeles deserves justice. Trinity Poague deserves a fair trial. Those two things are not in conflict. A fair trial is how we determine what justice looks like.
This is where you come in. You're watching this trial. You're seeing the same evidence the jury is seeing. You're forming opinions.
Here are the questions I want you to think about:
The doctors all said Romeo would have shown symptoms within seconds to minutes of his injury. Do you believe that timeline eliminates the possibility that Julian Williams caused the injuries the night before?
The investigation has documented gaps: hands not examined, jacket not collected, diapers thrown away. Does that affect your confidence in the State's case? If investigators had collected that diaper and tested it, and it showed blood in the stool from an injury that occurred before Sunday morning, would that change everything? Or would the medical timeline testimony still point to Trinity Poague?
Trinity Poague wrote "I want to punch him" about an eighteen-month-old child. Do you think that is just venting, or do you think it shows she was capable of violence against him? Consider that she wrote those words in August 2023, and the child died in January 2024. Five months of documented resentment. Does that pattern matter to you?
Dr. Clark testified about pattern bruising on Romeo's face, marks consistent with fingers gripping or slapping. The defense suggested those marks could have come from someone grabbing the child's face to check on him, to see if he was okay. Which explanation seems more likely to you given everything else we know about his injuries?
The defense has pointed to Julian Williams as an alternative suspect. He was drinking rum that weekend. He never took his son to a doctor in over a year of custody. His hands were never examined. Do you think the investigation should have focused more on him? Does the medical timeline testimony make that alternative theory more or less plausible?
Paris Permore, Trinity's roommate, said she believed Trinity when Trinity texted "I would never lay my hands on any kids." Paris knew Trinity better than almost anyone during this period. She saw how Trinity interacted with Romeo. She believed her friend was innocent. Does that belief carry any weight with you? Or does Paris's belief simply reflect the natural tendency to trust people we care about?
If you were on this jury right now, after Day 2, how would you be leaning? Guilty? Not guilty? Undecided?
Go back and watch the testimony. Watch Dr. Busman explain the thirty-to-sixty-minute window. Watch Dr. Olek say "zero percent chance" that child was normal after his injuries. Watch Dr. Clark testify that this was "abusive head trauma." Watch Paris Permore read the text messages.
Then tell me what you think. Because this is what watching the process is about. Not accepting what you are told. Not believing the prosecution or the defense automatically. Watching the evidence. Evaluating it. Thinking critically about what it proves and what it does not prove.
That is what my father taught me to do. That is what this channel exists to help you do.
Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old. He liked watching a show about birds. He drank Mountain Dew from a sippy cup. He was learning to walk. He deserves justice. Trinity Poague is nineteen years old. She was a nursing student with honors. She was a Jimmy Carter Leadership Program scholar. She deserves a fair trial. Those two things are not in conflict. A fair trial is how we honor both of them.
Somewhere in Sumter County tonight, a father still has an unwashed jacket hanging in his closet. Somewhere in that same county, a young woman is facing the possibility of spending the rest of her life in prison. The jury will have to decide what happened in that dorm room, based on medical evidence and text messages and the absence of evidence that was never collected.
That is the burden we place on juries. That is the weight of due process. Twelve people who did not know Romeo Angeles or Trinity Poague before this trial will determine how this story ends. They will listen to the evidence, they will deliberate, and they will reach a verdict. Whatever that verdict is, it will be the product of a process. A flawed process, perhaps. An imperfect process, certainly. But the only process we have for seeking justice in difficult cases.
The trial continues. Justice is a process. Let us keep watching together.