Ali-Mohamed Mohamud was convicted of second degree murder in the death of his 10-year old stepson. The beating was so bad that many police said that it was the worst crime they'd ever seen. The father duct taped the boy's mouth and binded his hands with electrical cord, and then proceeded to beat the boy over 70 times with a baker's rolling pin.
After the beating, 10 year old Abdifatah Mohamud's head was separated from is spinal cord, with his brain exposed, according to policce.
"Justice has been done," prosecutor Thomas M. Finnerty said after the verdict.
The little boy tried to run away from home after arguing with his father about his homework. That's when the beating took place.
"A person who should have been his protector was instead his murderer," Finnerty said to jurors. "Doing this to anyone is so inhuman, so wantonly cruel, but doing this to an utterly defenseless 10-year-old boy, less than a hundred pounds, his own stepson, who had referred to his murderer as 'Dad?' "
The sock taped in the boy's mouth caused him to vomit from suffocation after being hit in the head.
"All we're left with is hoping – hoping that somehow he lost consciousness somewhere closer to the beginning of the assault than to the end," Finnerty said.
Defense lawyer Kevin Spitler is still fighting for his client and says the verdict was a miscarriage of justice.
"It's a very sad and tragic case," said Spitler.
The judge did not allow the defense to use "extreme emotional disturbance" as a defense.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not standing here telling you that Mr. Mohamud didn't hit his son on April 17," Spitler told jurors. "And I'm not standing here telling you that he didn't put tape over his mouth or put a sock in his mouth. I'm not telling you he didn't perform the acts that the [crime scene] video displayed or the [police] photographs displayed.
"What I am telling you is he did not do it intentionally," Spitler said.
"It was not his conscious objective or purpose to cause his son's death. He was acting so out of character that he could not have been acting intentionally."
Mohamud faces up to 25 years to life in prison when sentenced.
- YourBlackWorld
