Did Innocent Man Commit Suicide After Wrongful Imprisonment?

This one was particularly hard.  His friends, carrying out his casket, formed the word  “injustice.”  I did not know Mr. Schirnhofer, but the experience was very moving.  The consensus was that he was no saint, he had his problems, but he seemed universally loved and admired by those in attendance.

The story, which was covered in the local media, was portrayed naturally in its darkest possible light by the Yolo County District Attorney.  But beneath the surface there is room to question and doubt.  We must certainly scrutinize the prison system for its treatment of Mr. Schirnhofer, who was placed in solitary confinement, with conflicting stories about his access to psychiatric care.

According to the DA’s release, a Yolo County jury convicted Richard Andrew Schirnhofer, 19, of Woodland, of four counts of child abuse to his girlfriend’s infant daughter. The jury also found Schirnhofer personally inflicted great bodily injury upon the infant when he broke her ribs during one of the abusive occasions he was convicted of.

On October 20, 2008, Yolo County Child Protective Services took custody of the seven-month-old infant because the infant’s mother had attempted suicide. When Child Protective Services took custody of the infant, a social worker changed the infant’s diaper and immediately saw red and purple bruising to the infant’s genital area.

The infant was taken to the University of California Davis Medical Center’s Child and Adolescent Resource and Evaluation Diagnostic and Treatment Center for medical evaluation. The medical professionals determined the infant was a battered baby.

The professionals found that the severe bruising in the infant’s genital area was most likely caused by slamming the infant down on a hard surface. The professionals also noted the infant suffered fractures to numerous other bones.  The infant also had bruising on her buttocks and jaw.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted Mr. Schirnhofer and the mother Jessica Carpenter for their criminal acts. On February 17, 2009, Carpenter chose to plead guilty to all five counts she was charged with, admitting she failed to protect her daughter from Mr. Schirnhofer. On June 17, 2009, Yolo Superior Court Judge Arvid Johnson imposed the maximum prison sentence for Carpenter. Judge Johnson sentenced Carpenter to six years and eight months in state prison.

During the two week jury trial for Mr. Schirhnofer, Carpenter testified that she failed to protect her daughter from Mr. Schirnhofer’s abuse. While the jury convicted Mr. Schirnhofer of child abuse and causing the infant’s multiple rib fractures, the jury found Mr. Schirnhofer not guilty of torturing the infant or of personally inflicting great bodily injury on other parts of the infant’s body.

“The verdict reflects the commitment of the jury to perform their civic duty in such a serious case with difficult evidence of horrific injuries to an innocent baby,” said Deputy District Attorney Tiffany Susz who prosecuted the case.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig commended the efforts of the Woodland Police Department, Yolo County Child Protective Services, and the University of California Davis Medical Center’s Child and Adolescent Resource and Evaluation Diagnostic and Treatment Center for their diligent work in this case. “Our office will continue to vigorously prosecute cases where innocent children like this infant are victimized,” said DA Reisig.

That is, of course, the DA’s version of events, but there is, of course, more to the story than this.  The case was a tough case for Public Defender Tracie Olson.

“This case tugged at my heart from the moment I was appointed.  First and foremost, an innocent and defenseless baby had been made to suffer,” she told the Vanguard in an interview following Richard Schirnhofer’s death.  “There was and is no excuse for that.”

The problem that Ms. Olson, and obviously the jury, faced was who was responsible for this horrendous act.

Mr. Schirnhofer originally faced multiple assaults with enhancements for great bodily injury (GBI).  He originally faced a charge for the sex offense of digital penetration.  The sex offense charge survived the preliminary hearings, but was dropped by the prosecution literally the day before trial.

He was also charged with torture, but was acquitted of that charge.  He also escaped all but one of the GBI charges, demonstrating that the jury believed that Mr. Schirnhofer was not the only one who had inflicted injuries upon the child.  He was convicted of the one GBI and three counts of child endangerment.

As Attorney Tracie Olson said, “Once I started to independently investigate the facts, I quickly realized that this was by no means a clear-cut case when it came to determining who was responsible for that suffering.”

The baby’s mother bears scrutiny as she suffered from a myriad of problems.  Indeed, it was her suicide attempt and subsequent trip to the hospital that alerted authorities to the injuries suffered by the baby.

The baby had a string of injuries: a fractured knee, femur, wrist, healing ribs which had occurred at different times, some perhaps prior to the couple having met.

“The more information I found out about this baby’s mother, the more I became convinced that she was the culpable party,” Tracie Olson told The Vanguard.  “She was the unstable adult in this child’s life.  She was the one prone to explosive outbursts.”

The mother would testify against Mr. Schirnhofer in court.  She pled guilty to all five charges against her, a move that has the family of Mr. Schrinhofer believing that she cut a deal with the DA in exchange for her six year, eight month prison sentence.

The mother also gave conflicting testimony.  First she said that Mr. Schirnhofer was never alone with the child, but then stated that she had been up all night and spent two hours alone with Mr. Schirnhofer.

She was not the best witness, having attempted to overdose on Tylenol PM when she was pregnant, and at the same time bipolar and self-medicating, rather than following the advice of doctors.

Her suicide attempt was, in fact, a mere matter of hours after the severe bruising to the baby’s buttocks had been inflicted.  Some might argue she was angry with herself for failing to protect her child, but it goes to the state of mind (particularly the manner in which she attempted to kill herself).  It was a troubling brusing, in fact, medical experts could not figure out exactly how the bruising was inflicted – it had a weird pattern and the labia area was totally spared.

The consensus seemed to be blunt force onto a hard and flat surface, but no one was completely sure.  The doctor testified that the injury took extreme and massive force.

Timing is a key issue in this case, because Richard Schirnhofer had only known the mother and the victim for a three-month period of time.  Were any of the injuries older than that?  The doctors said no, which seems to implicate Mr. Schirnhofer one way or another (either he committed the crime or he failed to stop it, at least in the minds of the DA).

Tracie Olson was also uncertain about the timing of the injuries the infant sustained.  She told the Vanguard, “Although the prosecutor’s medical expert opined at trial that the injuries likely had all occurred during the time that Richard was in this baby’s life, he also admitted that he could not exclude the possibility that at least some of the broken bones were inflicted before Richard entered the picture.”

But as Ms. Olson pointed out, “The question remained, if Richard didn’t inflict the injuries, did he fail to protect the baby from her mother?”

According to Tracie Olson, “There was no evidence that Richard was present when the injuries were inflicted.”

Moreover, as Lynne Rose-Jimenez pointed out, her son had no experience with babies.  He was a young person trying to be a father.  A point that the mother even acknowledged in letters to Ms. Rose-Jimenez.

While a grieving mother might not be the best witness for her son, there is evidence that corroborates the view that it might have been difficult for someone inexperienced with young children to detect injuries when they were not directly witnessed.

As Tracie Olson points out, even professionals had difficulty finding some of the injuries.

She told the Vanguard, “When professionals from Child Protective Services took the baby to the hospital after discovering the bruising, they admitted that they were unaware of the fact that the baby had broken bones; they, for example, did not notice tenderness or believe the baby was uncomfortable or in pain.”

Likewise she said, “The medical professionals who saw the baby similarly did not realize the baby had healing bone fractures until x-rays revealed them.”

“I thought this was strong evidence that if professionals didn’t know about broken bones, then how could a 19-year-old Richard Schirnhofer?” she asked rhetorically.

In the end though, the jury likely saw horrific injuries to the baby and felt the need to hold someone accountable for those injuries.

“Ultimately, I can say I was disappointed but not necessarily surprised when the jury found that Richard had failed to protect the baby,” Tracie Olson added.  “It’s extremely difficult not to hold a de facto parent responsible, no matter the circumstances, when a baby is repeatedly injured.” 

The three charges of child endangerment stem from that failure to protect the child.  Whether that is a fair burden to place on a 19-year-old young man, three months into a relationship with a clearly unstable woman, is subject to scrutiny.  Even with those charges alone, he faced ten years but could have been out in just five.

Where Tracie Olson was a bit perplexed was that they found him directly responsible for one set of injuries.

“That one conviction changed the sentencing options for Richard dramatically,” she said.

Instead of being out in five years, the soonest he could have left prison with the GBI charge was 12 years.  For a young man, that proved too much to bear.

Mr. Schirnhofer’s mother Lynne Rose-Jimenez told the Vanguard that in a letter that she received, she was told that he was medicated on psychiatric medication, and he did not want to take them.

The other inmates were harassing him due to the guards telling them details of Mr. Schirnhofer’s case.

Much of his time was spent in solitary confinement for a year in the county, and then a year in prison.

His mother believes they intentionally kept the torture and digital penetration charges on him because it raised the bail amount to a million and forced him to stay in custody.

Not all is bleak.  At the funeral the family mentioned that because Mr. Schirnhofer had checked the organ donor box on his driver’s license, they were able to keep him on life support for two days in order to harvest his organs and donate them.  The act saved the lives of several individuals. 

Still, the outcome does not sit well with his attorney.

“I’ve turned that trial over in my own mind repeatedly trying to figure out what I could have done differently to get a different result,” Ms. Olson added.  “I still don’t know if I’ve come up with the answer.”

She concluded, “What I do know is that Richard should not be defined by the worst thing he was accused of.  He was much more than that to many people, me being one.”

—David M. Greenwald reporting