Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old when he died. He liked watching a children's show about birds. 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, a name that wasn't on the birth certificate but was the only name Julian ever used. On the morning of January 14, 2024, JD was sitting in a pink plastic chair in a college dormitory room, eating Fritos and watching his bird show. His father kissed him goodbye and walked out the door to pick up a pizza. Thirty-five minutes later, that same father was racing back with a dying child in his arms, blood and foam coming from the baby's nose, vomit soaking the black Nike jacket Julian still keeps unwashed in his closet.
Today, almost two years later, twelve jurors in Sumter County, Georgia announced what they believe happened during those thirty-five minutes. They said Trinity Madison Poague killed Romeo Angeles. But they also said something else, something that reveals everything about how they understood the evidence in this case: they said she didn't mean to.
The verdict came after less than five hours of deliberation. On count one, malice murder, the jury found Trinity Poague not guilty. On counts two through six, felony murder, aggravated battery, and cruelty to children in the first degree, they found her guilty. The sentence: life in prison with the possibility of parole, plus twenty years running concurrently.
That split tells a story. Twelve people looked at the evidence, looked at the text messages where Trinity wrote about wanting to punch an eighteen-month-old, looked at the Google searches she conducted while that child lay dying in a hospital thirty minutes away, looked at the medical testimony establishing that JD's injuries happened during the window when only Trinity was with him, and they concluded: she caused his death. She beat him badly enough to fracture his skull and lacerate his liver. But they were not convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she set out to kill him.
Trinity Poague will spend at least thirty years in prison before she is eligible for parole. She was nineteen years old when the verdict was read. She will be approaching fifty before she has any chance of release. Her life, as she knew it, is over. Romeo Angeles never got the chance to have a life at all. His ended at eighteen months, in a dormitory room at Georgia Southwestern State University, during thirty-five minutes when his father was picking up a pizza and Mountain Dew.
Day 4 of this trial was the day of reckoning. The closing arguments, the jury charge, the deliberation, the verdict, the sentencing. Everything that had been building for four days came to its conclusion in a courtroom in Americus, Georgia. I watched every minute of it. What I saw was two lawyers making two fundamentally different arguments about what justice means, a judge carefully explaining the law, a jury asking questions that revealed how seriously they were taking their duty, and a verdict that threaded a needle most people didn't even know existed.
This is the story of how Trinity Poague went from presumed innocent to convicted killer, and what the distinction between murder and felony murder tells us about how our system tries to measure culpability when a child dies.
The prosecution began its closing argument with a simple premise: start with what is not in dispute. District Attorney Lewis Lamb stood before the jury and laid out the undisputed medical facts. Romeo Angeles died from massive head trauma. Three doctors, Dr. Michael Busman from the emergency room, Dr. Jill Olek from the PICU, and Dr. Anthony Clark the medical examiner, all agreed. The cause of death was a tremendous impact to the back of the head. The trauma required direct, high-impact force. It could not have resulted from a fall from an air mattress, from weak bones, from some rare childhood disorder. Something or someone struck that child with enough force to crack his skull from one side to the other.
And then came the timeline. The doctors all testified that the symptoms of such an injury would appear within seconds to minutes. Dr. Olek said there was a zero percent chance that a child with these injuries could behave normally for any period of time after the impact. Dr. Clark said the initial symptoms, drooling, staggering, vomiting, would have appeared very quickly, probably more like seconds than minutes after the blow. The child could not have been injured the night before and then behaved normally the next morning. The medical evidence was unanimous on this point.
The prosecutor then walked the jury through the timeline of January 14, 2024. At 11:55 in the morning, Julian Williams kissed his son goodbye. The child was sitting in a pink plastic chair, eating chips, watching his bird show. Thirty-five minutes later, Julian returned to find the child essentially unconscious, his head limp, his body limp, vomiting, draining cerebral spinal fluid from his nose. The child was in cardiac and respiratory arrest by the time he reached the hospital.
During those thirty-five minutes, one person and only one person was alone with JD Angelus. That person was Trinity Poague.
The prosecutor's argument was elegant in its simplicity. He told the jury this was actually an easy case, not a hard one. Normally when you have two people in a room and one ends up dead, the survivor claims self-defense, provocation, accident. But those arguments don't apply when the survivor is an eighteen-year-old woman and the victim is an eighteen-month-old baby. There is no universe in which JD Angelus attacked Trinity Poague. There is no scenario in which she was defending herself from a toddler. The two people in a room situation, which usually creates complexity, here creates clarity. Only one of them could have done it. Only one of them is still alive.
Then came the warning. The prosecutor told the jury that a smoke and mirrors show was coming. The defense would nitpick the evidence, would point to investigative failures, would attack Julian Williams' parenting, would complain about a dirty diaper that wasn't tested and vomit that wasn't collected. He asked them to keep one question in mind through all of that: What do any of these things really have to do with the death of JD Angelus?
Did poor parenting kill this child? No. Did missing well-baby doctor appointments kill this child? No. Would testing a dirty diaper or interviewing people in Coquit have put somebody else in the room with Trinity Poague during those thirty-five minutes? No. What killed this child was, beyond dispute, a massive tremendous blow to the back of his head that cracked his skull.
The prosecutor ended his opening argument with the words that would echo through the rest of the day: That girl killed that little boy. She cracked his skull out of anger, out of malice. She's the only person who could possibly have done it in the time frame in which it had to have occurred.
Then it was the defense's turn. Mark Gamble had a harder task. He wasn't arguing that Trinity Poague was a wonderful person who would never harm a child. The text messages made that argument impossible. He wasn't arguing that the child hadn't been violently injured. The medical evidence made that argument impossible. He was arguing something more fundamental: that the State of Georgia had not proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, who caused those injuries.
Gamble began by reminding the jury of what he had said in his opening statement: this was a case filled with suspicion but empty on evidence. He walked them through what the crime scene investigation had actually produced. Agent James Gibson, the GBI crime scene specialist, had testified that he collected not a single piece of evidence that was useful to the prosecution. No blood anywhere in the dormitory room. No weapon. No instrument that could have caused blunt force trauma. No place in the room where it looked like a child could have been pounded into furniture or wall. Nothing.
Gamble asked a devastating question: How is it possible that someone allegedly inflicted massive violent force injuries on a child and left zero forensic evidence? No blood, no fluids, no marks on any surface, nothing. The prosecution had a crime scene where they obtained zero evidence. Not a little evidence. Zero. Unless you count the Walmart receipt proving they bought drinks.
He pointed out that luminol, the chemical that can detect traces of blood invisible to the naked eye, was never used. Nobody asked why. It just wasn't done. The investigation that was supposed to prove Trinity Poague's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt couldn't even find evidence that a crime occurred in that room.
Then Gamble turned to what the defense had been hammering throughout the trial: the investigation's tunnel vision. He walked through the witnesses he had questioned, the GBI agents and officers and medical examiners. Every one of them, when asked if they could identify who caused the injuries based on their evidence, said no. Nobody could say from what they observed that Trinity Poague was the perpetrator. No ballistics matching a gun to an owner. No weapon traced to a suspect. No marks on the child's body showing a paddle or a bat or a distinctive instrument. Just blunt force trauma with no identifiable source.
The investigators didn't know who caused the injuries. They didn't know how the injuries were caused. They didn't have a weapon or an instrument. They had a theory, and they built a case around that theory without ruling out alternatives.
Gamble reminded the jury that if Trinity Poague had used her bare hands to inflict injuries requiring tremendous force, those hands should have shown evidence. Redness, bruising, scratching. She was interviewed within hours of the child's death. Nobody looked at her hands. Nobody photographed them. Nobody examined them for signs of violence. And Julian Williams, the child's father, who by his own admission was sometimes rough with the child, who passed out drunk while Trinity cared for his son, whose hands could have delivered the force more easily than an eighteen-year-old girl's, Julian Williams' hands were never examined either.
Why not? Because the investigators had already decided. They went down the rabbit trail, as Gamble put it, and they never looked back. They decided Trinity Poague was guilty before they finished investigating, and then they stopped investigating anyone else.
Agent Samantha Ford admitted she never went to the house where Romeo actually lived. Never talked to neighbors. Never interviewed Julian's coworkers. Never made any effort to investigate his background or behavior. When Gamble asked her whether child abuse cases sometimes reveal a pattern of prior injuries, she agreed they sometimes do. When he asked if it was important to investigate that possibility, she said no. Why? Because she already knew where the crime happened. She didn't need to look anywhere else.
The defense's most powerful moment came when Gamble turned to the medical literature. He had confronted Dr. Clark, the medical examiner, with research from Dr. Mary Case, a forensic scientist from St. Louis whose work Dr. Clark acknowledged he respected. The research documented cases where children had died from falls that should not have been fatal. A four-month-old who fell from an adult bed, hit a bedside table, had a normal CT scan, survived two days, then died on the way to the pediatrician. A twenty-one-month-old who fell from his own bed, cried, was comforted, vomited, was put back to bed, and was found dead the next morning. A seven-year-old who fell from a thirty-six-inch tree stump, complained of headache, vomited for twelve hours, and was found dead the next morning.
These were documented cases of fatal falls from low heights where the children did not show immediate catastrophic symptoms. They were comforted. They went back to bed. They died hours later. Dr. Clark tried to distinguish them by saying the fractures were in different locations, but Gamble's point was made: the medical literature shows that sometimes a child can sustain a fatal injury, appear to recover, and die later. The prosecution's certainty about the timeline was not as certain as they wanted the jury to believe.
If JD fell from the air mattress Saturday night, as Trinity told her mother and as two dormitory witnesses confirmed they heard a baby crying loudly around midnight, could that fall have caused injuries that didn't manifest fully until the next morning? The prosecution said no, impossible. The defense said the medical literature suggested otherwise.
Gamble addressed the text messages, the prosecution's strongest evidence of motive. He acknowledged that Trinity wrote things that could have been said better. She was eighteen years old, in an immature relationship with a twenty-three-year-old man, expressing frustration to her roommate about a child who wasn't hers and a boyfriend who dumped parenting responsibilities on her while he slept. But she never once said she was going to hurt the child. Nobody ever saw her hurt the child. Julian Williams himself never claimed she was abusive.
People say terrible things in private messages, Gamble reminded the jury. If his wife bought a thousand-dollar coat when he expected her to spend a hundred, he might tell a friend he could strangle her. Does that mean he's going to strangle his wife? Of course not. Poor language, perhaps. But not evidence of murder.
And the Google searches? Gamble reframed them completely. The prosecution wanted the jury to see them as consciousness of guilt, a killer researching her crime. But the searches happened after Trinity was at the hospital, after Dr. Busman had told her and Julian that the child had a severe skull fracture and was unlikely to survive. She searched for information about skull fractures and brain bleeds an hour after learning the child was dying. That's not a killer covering her tracks. That's a teenage girl trying to understand what she had just been told, trying to figure out how a child she had seen sitting in a chair eating chips could suddenly be dying from a fractured skull.
Gamble ended with a plea to the jury's conscience. He stood in what he called hallowed ground, the bedrock of American justice, the courtroom where the accused must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The State still didn't know how the injury happened, where it happened, who did it, or what was used to cause it. They had suspicion. They had a theory. They had a timeline. But they did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Do not, he told the jury, in your rush to seek justice, do so on the cross of innocent blood. Trinity Poague had nothing to do with the injury to that child. It was a tragedy, but the State couldn't prove she caused it.
After a brief recess, the prosecution returned for its final argument. Lewis Lamb was not going to let the defense's points go unanswered.
He opened with a story from the 1983 movie Scarface, about a drug dealer whose lawyer promises to create reasonable doubt but admits it's hard to do when the client is sitting there with two million dollars in twenties rolled up in duffel bags. The point was clear: some cases have explanations, and some cases have evidence that speaks for itself. This was the latter.
Lamb walked through the charges methodically. For aggravated battery, the State had to prove that Trinity maliciously harmed JD by rendering part of his body useless or seriously disfiguring it. The child's brain was rendered useless. His liver was lacerated. For cruelty to children, the State had to prove she maliciously caused cruel or excessive physical pain to a child. And malice, the judge would explain, doesn't require hatred or ill will. It simply means an intent to cause pain without justification, or doing an act while aware of a strong likelihood that pain would result.
If you pick up an eighteen-month-old baby and slam him down on furniture or against a wall with enough force to fracture his skull and tear his liver practically in half, Lamb argued, that is malice. You cannot do those things to anyone, particularly not to a child, without knowing that pain is going to result.
And if the jury found Trinity guilty of aggravated battery or cruelty to children, that brought them to felony murder. Felony murder doesn't require a specific intent to kill. It only requires that a death occurred during the commission of a felony. The distinction matters: malice murder requires proof that the defendant intended to kill. Felony murder requires only proof that the defendant committed a felony that caused the death, with or without intending that death to occur.
Lamb addressed the defense's points with controlled fury. The diaper? Dr. Busman had acknowledged that a photograph of a diaper looked reddish under certain lighting, but there was also a photograph of JD drinking bright red fruit punch from a sippy cup on the drive from Albany. Red stool from red punch is not evidence of prior injury. And even if the diaper had been tested, what disease or illness could have been detected that would explain a crushed skull? None.
Julian Williams' parenting? Yes, he missed well-baby checkups. Yes, his car seat was inappropriate for the child's weight. If a trooper had seen him driving with the child improperly restrained, he would have gotten a ticket. But poor parenting didn't kill this child. A massive blow to the back of the head killed this child.
The crime scene with no blood? Lamb explained that not all crime scenes look like the Manson family has been there. Some crime scenes don't have walls full of bullet holes. The child had internal injuries, not external bleeding. There was no blood because he wasn't bleeding externally. He was dying from trauma inside his skull and his abdomen, not from cuts or lacerations.
And the weapon? Lamb pointed to the photographs of the dorm room. A hard plywood chair. A desk. Another desk. A bed with a metal bedpost sticking out at the corner. Dr. Clark had testified that injuries like JD's were consistent with being picked up and slammed down on a hard surface like a desk or a chair. The weapons were right there in the room. Just because no one captured it on video didn't mean it didn't happen.
Lamb addressed the defense's theory about the fall from the bed with visible frustration. The medical testimony was unanimous: this child could not have been injured Saturday night and behaved normally Sunday morning. Zero percent chance, Dr. Olek had said. Seconds to minutes before symptoms appeared, Dr. Clark had said. The defense wanted the jury to believe that medical literature about rare cases of delayed symptoms from minor falls applied to a child with a skull fracture extending from one side to the other and a liver lacerated so badly blood was collecting under the skin. That wasn't credible. That wasn't reasonable. That was grasping at straws.
Lamb ended with an appeal to the jury's duty. Jury verdicts speak to the community, he said. They send messages. If the jury acquitted Trinity Poague, they would be sending a message that as long as you don't leave a lot of evidence at the scene, you walk. As long as there's no video, no confession, you're free. Is that the standard they wanted to set?
JD Angelus was eighteen months old. If the jury wanted to do right by him, they would take the verdict form, check guilty on every count, and deliver the true verdict the evidence demanded.
Judge Sizemore then delivered his jury charge, the legal instructions that would guide the jury's deliberations. The defendant is presumed innocent, he told them. That presumption remains until overcome by evidence sufficient to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. No person shall be convicted unless every element of the crime is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The burden rests entirely on the State. The defendant has no burden whatsoever, and that burden never shifts.
He explained reasonable doubt: a doubt of a fair-minded, impartial juror honestly seeking the truth. A doubt based on common sense and reason. If their minds were wavering, unsettled, or unsatisfied, that was the doubt of the law, and they must acquit. Facts that merely place a grave suspicion on the defendant, or merely raise speculation or conjecture, are not sufficient to authorize conviction.
He explained circumstantial evidence: to authorize a conviction based on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts must not only be consistent with the theory of guilt but must exclude every other reasonable theory other than guilt. The jury had to determine whether any reasonable explanation existed other than Trinity Poague's guilt.
He explained the difference between malice murder and felony murder. Malice murder requires proof of intent to kill, either express or implied. Felony murder requires only that a death occurred during the commission of a felony, with or without intent to kill. The jury could find Trinity guilty of causing JD's death without finding that she intended to kill him.
And then the jury retired to deliberate. They took the evidence, the instructions, and each other into a room where they would decide Trinity Poague's fate.
Two hours into deliberations, the jury sent out a question. They wanted clarification on the counts. What was count two versus count three? What was count four versus count five? Were they asking about the head versus the liver? The judge brought them back and told them to read the indictment. He couldn't interpret the charges for them. They had to determine the facts and apply the law as he had instructed.
The question revealed that the jury was taking their task seriously. They were trying to understand the relationship between the different charges, the connection between aggravated battery and felony murder, the distinction between injuries to the head and injuries to the liver. They were not rushing to a verdict. They were wrestling with the complexity of a six-count indictment.
Less than three hours later, the jury returned.
Trinity Poague stood as the verdict was read. On count one, malice murder, the jury found the defendant not guilty. On counts two, three, four, five, and six, the jury found the defendant guilty. Guilty of felony murder based on aggravated battery. Guilty of felony murder based on cruelty to children. Guilty of aggravated battery to the head. Guilty of aggravated battery to the liver. Guilty of cruelty to children in the first degree.
The split verdict said everything. The jury believed Trinity Poague killed Romeo Angeles. They believed she beat him badly enough to fracture his skull and lacerate his liver. They believed she acted with malice in the legal sense, with an intent to cause pain or an awareness that pain would result. But they did not believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she intended to kill him.
The distinction matters. Malice murder in Georgia carries a sentence of life without parole or death. Felony murder carries a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. The jury, by finding her not guilty of malice murder, was saying: she killed this child, but we are not convinced she set out to kill him. She will spend decades in prison, but she will not die there. She will have a chance, someday, to walk free.
After a brief recess to address technical questions about merger of charges, the court proceeded to sentencing. The prosecutor asked for life in prison on the felony murder count plus twenty years consecutive on the cruelty charge. He acknowledged that Trinity was very young, that this was a tragedy on both sides of the courtroom. He noted that the jury's verdict, by acquitting on malice murder, suggested they did not find a deliberate intention to kill. That constrained his recommendation. He asked for life with parole rather than life without.
The defense asked for the sentences to run concurrently. Mark Gamble pointed out that if the twenty years on cruelty ran consecutive to the life sentence, Trinity would not be eligible for parole for fifty years. She would be approaching seventy before she had any chance of release. That was, functionally, life without parole. She was eighteen at the time of the offense, had never been in trouble with the law, had been doing well in college. The tragedy was undeniable, but the sentence should not be so severe as to eliminate any hope.
Julian Williams and his sister Ashanti Burr, JD's aunt and primary caregiver, were present in the courtroom. The prosecutor asked if they wanted to address the court. They declined. Julian Williams, who had testified that he kept his son's vomit-stained jacket unwashed as a memory, who had broken down describing how he found his child limp and dying, sat in silence as the woman convicted of killing his son was sentenced.
Judge Sizemore addressed Trinity Poague directly. He acknowledged the tragedy on both sides of the courtroom. He had heard the case and considered the arguments. The conduct that led to JD's death warranted a sentence of life in prison. On count two, he sentenced her to life. On count six, he sentenced her to twenty years. The sentences would run concurrently.
Trinity Poague would be eligible for parole after thirty years. She will be approaching fifty when that day comes. She will have spent her entire adult life in prison for what happened in those thirty-five minutes.
The judge offered final words to both sides. He hoped this could bring some closure to the family. He told Trinity that he hoped she could have some sort of life, both in prison and after, if she ever got out. It was a complete tragedy, he said. Make the best of it.
And with that, the trial of Trinity Madison Poague was over.
The split verdict in this case reveals a jury that took its duty seriously and navigated the evidence with remarkable precision. They were not swayed by emotion to convict on the most serious charge. They were not swayed by defense arguments to acquit entirely. They found a middle ground that the law provides but that most observers probably didn't anticipate.
To understand this verdict, you have to understand what the jury was wrestling with. They were presented with two fundamentally different narratives about the same set of facts, and they had to decide which one to believe. The prosecution said Trinity Poague snapped and beat an eighteen-month-old child to death. The defense said investigators rushed to judgment, ignored alternative explanations, and built a case on speculation instead of evidence. The jury had to choose.
But they didn't choose entirely one way or the other. They rejected the prosecution's theory that Trinity acted with a deliberate intention to kill. They also rejected the defense's theory that reasonable doubt existed about who caused JD's injuries. They found a middle path: she killed him, but she didn't mean to kill him. That's a verdict that requires careful thought, not emotional reaction.
Consider what the jury had to work through. They had four days of testimony from twenty witnesses. They had medical experts explaining injury patterns and timelines. They had text messages spanning five months. They had Google search records. They had crime scene photographs that showed no evidence of violence. They had testimony from dormitory residents, from police officers, from GBI agents, from the child's father. They had to weigh all of that evidence, apply legal standards they had only learned about during jury instructions, and reach a unanimous conclusion on six separate charges.
The fact that they asked a question during deliberations, seeking clarification on which counts related to which injuries, shows they were taking the complexity seriously. They weren't just deciding guilty or not guilty. They were trying to understand the relationship between aggravated battery and felony murder, between injury to the head and injury to the liver, between the different theories of culpability the prosecution had charged. That kind of careful analysis is exactly what we want from juries.
What convinced them that Trinity Poague caused JD's death? Almost certainly the medical evidence. Three doctors testified that the child's injuries would have produced symptoms within seconds to minutes. The prosecution hammered this point relentlessly: JD was fine when Julian left, dying when Julian returned, and only Trinity was with him during those thirty-five minutes. The jury apparently found this timeline convincing.
The text messages likely reinforced the medical evidence. Trinity wrote, months before JD's death, about wanting to punch him, about letting him hit a wall, about promising she wasn't killing him. Those messages showed a pattern of resentment and frustration. When combined with the medical timeline, they painted a picture of a young woman who snapped, who took out her frustration on a helpless child, who struck him hard enough to kill.
The Google searches may have sealed it. Whatever innocent explanation the defense tried to offer, the fact remains that Trinity was searching for information about brain bleeds and skull fractures while the child lay dying. The prosecution asked: What innocent person does that? The jury apparently agreed that no innocent person does.
But why did they acquit on malice murder? The distinction requires understanding what malice murder means in Georgia law. Malice murder requires proof of a deliberate intention to kill. It's not enough to prove that the defendant acted with reckless disregard for life. It's not enough to prove that the defendant should have known the victim might die. The prosecution must prove that the defendant actually intended to cause death.
The jury apparently concluded that Trinity Poague beat JD Angelus with enough force to kill him, but that she did not set out to kill him. Perhaps they believed she was trying to discipline him, or silence him, or punish him, but not to end his life. Perhaps they believed the death was the result of an assault that went too far, not of a calculated murder.
This is the kind of distinction that only matters in the legal system, but it matters a great deal there. The difference between malice murder and felony murder is the difference between dying in prison and having a chance, however distant, of eventual release. The jury gave Trinity Poague that chance.
The defense raised legitimate questions about the investigation. The crime scene produced no forensic evidence. The diaper was discarded. Julian Williams' hands were never examined. The home where JD actually lived was never investigated. These were real failures, and the defense exploited them skillfully. But ultimately, the jury did not find that these failures created reasonable doubt about Trinity's guilt. They found that despite the investigation's flaws, the evidence of her culpability was sufficient.
The alternative theories the defense offered did not persuade the jury. The fall from the air mattress Saturday night, the possibility that Julian Williams caused the injuries, the medical literature about delayed symptoms from minor falls. The jury weighed these alternatives and found them less credible than the prosecution's theory. When twelve people unanimously conclude that a defendant caused a child's death despite the defense's best efforts, that is the system working as intended.
This case illustrates several important principles about how our criminal justice system works, and why it works the way it does.
First, the burden of proof is real. The prosecution had to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt on every charge. On malice murder, the jury found that burden was not met. Trinity Poague was acquitted of the most serious charge against her, not because the jury believed she was innocent of causing JD's death, but because the prosecution did not prove she intended to kill him. That's how the system is supposed to work. The prosecution cannot convict simply by proving that something terrible happened. They must prove that the defendant committed the specific crime charged.
This is the burden of proof operating exactly as it should. The prosecution presented a powerful case. The medical evidence was compelling. The text messages were damaging. The timeline was difficult to explain away. But for malice murder, they needed something more: proof of intent to kill. And the jury apparently concluded that while Trinity's actions were violent enough to cause death, the evidence didn't establish that she acted with the deliberate purpose of ending JD's life. That's a meaningful distinction, and the jury honored it.
Second, jury instructions matter. Judge Sizemore carefully explained the difference between malice murder and felony murder, the meaning of reasonable doubt, the requirements for circumstantial evidence. The jury asked questions to ensure they understood the charges. They deliberated for hours, not minutes. They reached a nuanced verdict that reflected their understanding of the law. This is what we want from juries: careful consideration of the evidence in light of the legal standards they're given.
Too often, we assume juries are just emotional reactions to evidence. We assume they vote guilty when they're angry and not guilty when they feel sympathy. This verdict proves otherwise. Twelve people looked at evidence of a dead baby, heard testimony about a fractured skull and lacerated liver, saw text messages expressing hostility toward the victim, and they still managed to make legal distinctions. They convicted on felony murder while acquitting on malice murder. They applied the law as the judge explained it. That's remarkable, and it should give us confidence in the jury system.
Third, circumstantial evidence can be powerful. There was no eyewitness to JD's death. There was no confession. There was no video. The prosecution built its case from medical testimony, text messages, and a timeline. The jury found that evidence sufficient to convict on five of six counts. The absence of direct evidence does not mean the absence of proof. Circumstantial evidence, properly presented and carefully evaluated, can meet the reasonable doubt standard.
The defense wanted the jury to believe that without direct evidence, without a confession, without a witness to the act itself, conviction was impossible. That's not how the law works. Circumstantial evidence can be just as powerful as direct evidence, sometimes more so. A confession can be coerced. An eyewitness can be mistaken. But when the circumstances all point in the same direction, when the timeline eliminates other possibilities, when the only person who could have done it is the defendant, that circumstantial case can be overwhelming.
Fourth, defense arguments about investigative failures have limits. The defense hammered the GBI for not testing the diaper, not photographing hands, not investigating Julian Williams more thoroughly. These were legitimate criticisms. But the jury apparently concluded that even if the investigation had been perfect, the evidence still pointed to Trinity Poague. The failures didn't create reasonable doubt because they didn't change the fundamental facts: JD was fine when Julian left, dying when Julian returned, and only Trinity was there.
This is an important lesson. Defense attorneys often argue that investigative failures must result in acquittal, that if the police didn't do their job perfectly, the defendant must go free. But that's not what reasonable doubt means. Reasonable doubt is a doubt based on reason, not on speculation about what might have been found if investigators had done more. If the existing evidence proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, investigative imperfections don't change that conclusion.
My father, Steven M. Askin, spent his career insisting that everyone deserves their day in court, that the prosecution must prove its case, that suspicion is not enough to take away someone's freedom. Trinity Poague got her day in court. She had a skilled defense attorney who raised every possible challenge. She got to confront the witnesses against her. She got a jury that took its duty seriously enough to acquit her of the most serious charge. The system worked for her, even as it convicted her.
And Romeo Angeles? JD, as his father called him? He got justice too, in the only way our system can provide it. The person who killed him will spend decades in prison. She will be held accountable for taking his life. It won't bring him back. Nothing can bring him back. But the system said, loudly and clearly, that what happened to him was a crime, that someone was responsible, and that person will pay the price.
That's what we ask of the justice system. Not perfection. Not certainty. Just a fair process that evaluates the evidence and reaches a conclusion based on the law. Trinity Poague got that fair process. She was convicted on the evidence. She has the right to appeal. The system did what it was supposed to do.
Four days of testimony. Twenty witnesses. Hundreds of pages of evidence. And at the end, twelve strangers decided that Trinity Madison Poague killed Romeo Angeles.
I have watched this trial from opening statement to sentencing. I have seen the text messages where Trinity expressed resentment toward an eighteen-month-old child. I have heard the medical testimony establishing that JD's injuries happened during the window when only Trinity was with him. I have watched the defense raise questions about Julian Williams, about the investigation, about alternative explanations. I have seen the prosecution argue that none of those questions matter because the evidence of Trinity's guilt is overwhelming.
What do I believe? I believe the jury got it right.
I believe Trinity Poague caused JD's death. The medical evidence is too consistent, too unanimous, too compelling to dismiss. Three doctors said the child could not have been injured Saturday night and behaved normally Sunday morning. The timeline points to those thirty-five minutes. Only Trinity was there. The text messages show a pattern of frustration and resentment that makes the medical evidence more credible, not less.
The Google searches seal it for me. Trinity searched for information about brain bleeds and skull fractures while JD lay dying in a hospital. The defense tried to frame this as innocent curiosity, a teenager trying to understand what a doctor had told her. But that explanation doesn't ring true. If you're genuinely shocked by a child's injury, if you truly don't understand what happened, you don't research medical conditions. You cry. You pray. You call your mother. You wait desperately for news. You don't calmly type search terms into your phone about the specific injuries that are killing the child you were alone with.
The searches suggest knowledge. They suggest someone who already understood, at some level, what had happened and was trying to learn whether it would be detected. Whether a skull fracture could go unnoticed. Whether a brain bleed could be explained away. The defense offered no explanation for why an innocent person would research those specific topics at that specific moment. The jury apparently drew the obvious inference.
I also believe the jury was right to acquit on malice murder. There is something different about deliberately setting out to kill a child and striking a child in anger hard enough to kill. Both are horrific. Both deserve punishment. But they are not the same, and the law recognizes that distinction. Trinity Poague was nineteen years old, a former honors student, a pageant queen, a nursing student. Nothing in her background suggested she was capable of premeditated murder. But frustration, exhaustion, resentment, anger? Those can build up in anyone, especially an eighteen-year-old who found herself caring for a child that wasn't hers while her boyfriend slept.
Think about the scenario the evidence suggests. Julian Williams had been staying in Trinity's dorm room with his eighteen-month-old son. By Trinity's own text messages, she was frustrated with the situation. She didn't want to be a mother figure to a child that wasn't hers. She resented that Julian would dump the child on her and go to sleep. She was an eighteen-year-old college freshman trying to start her own life, and instead she was caring for someone else's toddler in a small dormitory room.
On January 14, Julian left to pick up a pizza. He left Trinity alone with a child she had expressed frustration about for months. Something happened in those thirty-five minutes. Maybe JD was crying and wouldn't stop. Maybe he was fussy, or demanding, or did something that pushed Trinity over the edge. We will never know exactly what triggered it, because Trinity never told anyone and JD cannot speak for himself.
What we know is that when Julian returned, his son was dying. The injuries that killed him, a fractured skull and lacerated liver, required significant force. Someone struck that child hard enough to crack bone and tear internal organs. The only person there was Trinity Poague.
Did she intend to kill him? Or did she intend to hurt him, to silence him, to punish him, without understanding that she could kill an eighteen-month-old with a blow that might only bruise an adult? The jury apparently concluded they couldn't be sure. They found felony murder, which requires only that a death occurred during the commission of a violent felony, without requiring proof of intent to kill. They acquitted on malice murder, which requires that deliberate intent.
The jury's verdict says: she killed him, but she didn't mean to kill him. She will be punished for the killing. She will not be punished for an intent she may not have had.
Some will say she got off easy. Felony murder instead of malice murder means she will have a chance at parole in thirty years. Some will say that's not enough for a child's life. I understand that feeling. JD Angelus will never have the chance to grow up, to go to school, to fall in love, to have children of his own. He was eighteen months old. He had his whole life ahead of him. Someone took that from him.
But thirty years is not nothing. Trinity Poague will be nearly fifty years old before she is eligible for parole. Her twenties, thirties, and forties will be spent behind bars. Every dream she had for her life is gone. Every possibility she imagined for herself is foreclosed. That is not a slap on the wrist. That is a life sentence in all but name.
And even when she becomes eligible for parole, there's no guarantee she will receive it. The parole board will look at this case. They will see that she killed an eighteen-month-old child. They will consider whether she has shown remorse, whether she has taken responsibility, whether she poses a danger to society. Many people convicted of crimes against children are denied parole repeatedly. Trinity may spend the rest of her life in prison even with parole eligibility.
What strikes me most about this case is the tragedy on both sides. Romeo Angeles was a baby. He was learning to walk. He was learning to talk. He had done nothing wrong except exist, except require care, except be a toddler in a dormitory room where someone didn't want him. His death is senseless and heartbreaking. Nothing in this verdict brings him back. Nothing makes his loss less painful for the father who loved him.
And Trinity Poague was also young. She was eighteen, barely an adult, starting her first year of college. She had achievements and promise. She had a future that is now gone. Whatever she did in those thirty-five minutes destroyed two lives: the child she killed and her own. She will spend the rest of her youth, her middle age, and possibly her entire life paying for what happened in that dorm room.
And the system gave her due process. It presumed her innocent until proven guilty. It required the prosecution to meet its burden on every charge. It gave her a defense attorney who raised every argument available. It gave her a jury that acquitted her when the evidence fell short. That is what we promise every defendant, no matter how sympathetic the victim, no matter how horrific the crime. Trinity Poague received that promise. She was convicted because the evidence proved her guilt, not because the jury was angry or emotional or unable to set aside sympathy for a dead child.
That's the system working. Imperfectly, as always. Humanly, as it must. But working.
The trial is over, but the legal process continues. Trinity Poague has the right to appeal her conviction. She has thirty days to file a notice of appeal and four years to pursue habeas corpus relief if she believes her constitutional rights were violated.
Possible grounds for appeal could include the admission of the text messages, the scope of the GBI investigation, or the medical testimony about timing. Defense attorney Mark Gamble raised objections throughout the trial that could form the basis for appellate arguments. Whether any of those arguments will succeed is impossible to predict, but the appeals process exists precisely for cases like this, where the stakes are high and the evidence is primarily circumstantial.
The text messages present an interesting appellate issue. The prosecution used months-old messages expressing frustration with a toddler to establish motive for murder. Defense attorneys could argue that these messages were prejudicial, that they inflamed the jury against Trinity without actually proving she committed the crime. The messages showed she was frustrated with JD. They didn't show she killed him. Whether an appellate court would find their admission was error, and whether any error was harmful enough to require a new trial, is an open question.
The medical testimony might also be challenged. The prosecution's case depended heavily on the doctors' certainty about timing. But the defense introduced medical literature showing that fatal injuries from falls can sometimes have delayed symptoms. If new medical research emerges supporting that possibility, or if Trinity's attorneys can find experts who disagree with the prosecution's witnesses, that could form the basis for a post-conviction challenge.
Julian Williams and his family will continue their own journey. They have lost a child, watched the woman accused of killing him go to trial, and seen her convicted. The closure the judge hoped for may or may not come. Grief doesn't work on a legal timeline. The conviction is a form of justice, but it doesn't bring JD back. It doesn't fill the empty space where a little boy should be growing up.
Julian still has that jacket, the black Nike tracksuit JD was wearing, stained with vomit from his son's final moments. He told the jury he has never washed it because it's the last thing he has to remember. That image, of a father holding onto a child's vomit-stained clothing because he has nothing else, will stay with me long after this trial fades from the news.
And Trinity Poague begins her sentence. She will be transported to a state facility. She will begin the process of adapting to a life behind bars. She will have opportunities for education, for reflection, for whatever rehabilitation the prison system can offer. Whether she uses those opportunities, whether she emerges in thirty years as someone different from the nineteen-year-old who stood silent as the verdict was read, is a story that hasn't been written yet.
The Georgia Department of Corrections will determine where she serves her sentence. Parole eligibility comes after serving thirty years, but parole is not guaranteed. She will have to convince a parole board that she is no longer a danger, that she has taken responsibility, that she deserves a second chance. That decision is decades away. A lot can change in thirty years.
What won't change is what happened on January 14, 2024. A child died. Someone was responsible. Twelve jurors said that someone was Trinity Poague. She will carry that verdict for the rest of her life, whether she spends it behind bars or eventually walks free.
You've watched this trial with me. You've seen the evidence, heard the arguments, witnessed the verdict. Now I want to know what you think.
Did the jury get it right?
Not whether you think Trinity Poague killed JD Angelus. The jury settled that question. They believed she did. The question is whether the evidence supported that conclusion. Whether twelve people, looking at the medical testimony and the timeline and the text messages and the Google searches, were justified in concluding that she caused his death.
Think about the standard they were asked to apply. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Not beyond all doubt. Not beyond any possible alternative explanation. Beyond reasonable doubt. A doubt based on reason, not speculation. Does the evidence meet that standard? Would you have been able to vote guilty, knowing your vote would send a nineteen-year-old to prison for life?
And what about the split verdict? Do you agree that there's a meaningful difference between killing a child and intending to kill a child? Should Trinity Poague have been convicted of malice murder, or did the jury make the right call in acquitting her of that charge?
The prosecution argued that the force required to cause these injuries demonstrated intent. You don't fracture a skull and lacerate a liver by accident. You don't do that kind of damage without meaning to hurt someone badly. The defense argued that there's a difference between intending to hurt and intending to kill, that a moment of rage is different from premeditated murder. Which argument do you find more persuasive?
Consider the sentence. Life in prison with the possibility of parole after thirty years. Is that enough for the death of an eighteen-month-old child? Is it too much for an eighteen-year-old who may have acted in a moment of frustrated anger rather than calculated malice? Where is the line between justice and vengeance, between accountability and mercy?
Go back and watch the prosecutor say she killed that little boy out of anger and malice. Then watch the defense argue that the crime scene produced zero evidence. Then watch the verdict being read. Then watch the judge sentence her to life with the possibility of parole.
Ask yourself: Is this justice?
For Romeo Angeles, called JD by the father who loved him, who will never grow up, never go to school, never have the chance to become whoever he was going to become?
For Trinity Poague, who was eighteen years old, a college freshman with a bright future, and is now facing thirty years in prison before she can even ask to be released?
For Julian Williams, who lost his son and watched the woman he was dating go on trial for killing him, who still keeps an unwashed jacket as the last thing he has to remember?
For the system itself, which promises due process and the presumption of innocence but must also protect children who cannot protect themselves?
Justice is a process. We watch it unfold. We evaluate it. We ask whether it worked. Sometimes the answer is clear. Sometimes it isn't.
What's your answer?
Tell me in the comments. Engage with the coverage. This is how we hold the system accountable. This is how we honor both the victim who deserved to live and the defendant who deserved a fair trial.
Romeo Angeles was eighteen months old. Trinity Poague was eighteen years old. Both of their lives ended on January 14, 2024. One in a hospital in Americus. One in a dormitory room at Georgia Southwestern. The jury said one caused the other. The system has rendered its judgment. Whether that judgment is justice is a question only you can answer.
Thank you for watching this trial with me. Thank you for taking the time to understand not just what happened, but why it matters. Thank you for believing that due process and the presumption of innocence are worth defending, even in cases where the victim was a child, even when the evidence of guilt is strong.
This is what my father taught me. Steven M. Askin spent his life fighting for the principle that everyone deserves their day in court. He was twice prosecuted for it. He never stopped believing. He passed that belief to me, and I pass it to you.
Watch the system. Question it. Hold it accountable. That's how we honor both Romeo Angeles and the principles that are supposed to protect all of us.
Justice is a process. The process has reached its conclusion in this case. But our work, the work of watching and questioning and demanding that the system work fairly, that work never ends.
Until next time, this is Justice Is A Process. I'm Steven M. Askin II. Let's keep watching together.