He said it was just a spanking, but the State proved yesterday that the fatal beating Anton Haisley Bruce inflicted on his infant step-daughter was murder.

Bruce stood emotionless when a 12-member jury found him guilty of killing two-and-a-half-year-old Kareema Roberts five years ago.

Among the witnesses who helped convict Bruce was Shemelia Roberts, his wife and Kareema’s mother, who was pregnant at the time with his child.

She said yesterday that the verdict was just.

Asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed, Bruce whispered: ’I am not guilty of murder’.

The child suffered 17 injuries, the autopsy found.

Justice Malcolm Holdip then sentenced Bruce to death by hanging.

This brought to an end the trial which began in the San Fernando First Assize Court on July 9 but was suspended on August 3 for six weeks for the traditional court recess.

The case resumed on September 18.

The 12-member jury, after deliberating for about one hour yesterday, emerged from the jury room and asked Holdip to explain again, the law as it related to murder and manslaughter.

They returned about two hours later with the guilty verdict.

Pathologist Dr Hughvon Des Vignes, who conducted the post mortem examination on Kareema on April 11, 2004, discovered 17 injuries on the child. He said death was the result of a three-centimetre laceration to the liver with multiple blunt trauma injuries as a factor.

Des Vignes testified that the blow to the liver would have been inflicted with severe force. Bruce had admitted that he beat the child.

In his defence, Bruce told the court that he realised, on the morning of Kareema’s death, that about $700 to $800 was missing from a pouch. He said the money was being saved in anticipation of the birth of a newborn baby as his then 19-year-old wife, Shemelia Roberts, Kareema’s mother, was four months pregnant.

He said he asked Roberts’s eight-year-old sister, Jerkisha and her five-year-old brother Jiel if they knew anything about the missing money and was told by them they had taken the money and spent it at a nearby parlour.

The court heard from Bruce that a visit to the parlour erased any doubt from his mind about where the money went. Bruce said he also learnt that Kareema had eaten of the snacks purchased with the money.

He said he gave Jerkisha and Jiel the option of being returned to their step-mother’s home or receiving licks but they begged him not to be sent back and to not tell Roberts about the missing money.

Bruce told the court that he decided that he would use a whip and give the two older children ten lashes each and Kareema five as she was younger. The court heard that Jerkisha was beaten with the whip but Jiel managed to get a hold of the whip and threw it outside when it was his turn.

He said by the time he got to Kareema, his hand was hurting him and he made, somewhat of a fist, and dealt her some blows.

Taken to the Couva Health Facility later that day, Kareema was pronounced dead within five minutes of arrival.