By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
A woman who had been one of two people charged with murder in connection with the March 27, 2021, death of a 19-month-old Barren County child, has pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence.
Her previous co-defendant, Devin Pierce, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in March of this year and was sentenced in May to serve seven years, minus the time he’d already served. The child, who’s mother was a family friend of Pierce’s, had been left the care of the pair.
Serenity Brown’s plea Monday in Barren Circuit Court was part of an agreement offered by Commonwealth’s Attorney John Gardner. The recommended sentence was three years; however, the commonwealth also agreed to allow pretrial diversion for that same amount of time for her case. That means that if she meets the terms of the diversion that include not getting into any further trouble during those three years, she would not have to serve that sentence and then even that charge would be dismissed, the plea would be vacated. The record can be expunged afterward.
Barren Circuit Judge John T. Alexander showed Brown three documents – the plea agreement, her guilty plea and the pretrial diversion agreement – and asked her to verify it was her signature on each of them, which she did.
After going through the standard questions and explanations of the rights she would be waiving by pleading guilty, he briefly explained what a pretrial diversion does.
“When you have a felony charge, that’s close to being, you know, the best outcome you can have, because you have the chance to get out of it with no record,” the judge said.
He provided Gardner the opportunity to add any comments, and the prosecuting attorney said that Brown has not been in any other trouble while the case has been pending , and he noted Pierce’s plea of “manslaughter in the second degree for causing the infant’s death in this case.” Gardner said that, had Brown’s case gone to trial, it would have been difficult to prove she aided or did the act herself, so the likelihood of conviction on that charge would not have been great.
“We do believe there’s evidence that she contacted her parents after the fact – that this was after the child was taken to the hospital and law enforcement became involved – to remove some marijuana from the household, hence the tampering-with-physical evidence charge,” he said. “So that’s the reasons the commonwealth has come to this resolution.”
After Brown admitted to the judge that she had engaged in the behavior with which she was charged, he reviewed the pretrial diversion agreement and said he would accept it, noting a few of the terms that he had to be the one to decide.
She will have to pay a supervision fee to the Kentucky Division of Probation and Parole, and he agreed to the minimum of $10 per month. She will have to pay the court costs for her case, which he said would probably be around $170, and he gave her six months to pay it, but she won’t have to pay a fine. She will have to report to Probation and Parole as they direct, he said.
Alexander added that he would order that the case be automatically dismissed when it comes up for review once the three-year term is over if she has met the requirements, and she does not have to be there for that unless she just wants to be. A few months after that, it’ll come up automatically for expungement, and he said that would be done.
“It started out pretty scary; the charge is pretty scary. … It looked bleak at the time, but we’ve gotten to the point here where you’re going to be able to take this last little bit here and come out about, you know, about as well as you could hope for,” the judge said.
On the evening in question, emergency personnel responded to a call about an unresponsive child, who was transported to T.J. Samson Community Hospital and later pronounced deceased. An autopsy was performed after detectives observed “suspicious bruising” on the child’s head.
“The results of the autopsy determined the child died from blunt impact injuries of the head, and the manner of death was ruled homicide,” according to a press release from the Barren County Sheriff’s Office at the time.
