NEW ORLEANS — A magistrate commissioner let a father accused of abusing and murdering his 5-month-old daughter out of jail on a $175,000 bond, then agreed last Wednesday to let him take trips to Florida and Colorado during a scheduled custody trial for his 3-year-old son.
According to our partners at The Times-Picayune, Commissioner Jay Daniels, appointed to a 6-year term this year, told the father, 42-year-old Chris Strickland: "The only reason I'm not granting a high bond is because you demonstrated you have a willingness to go through the process."
But last Friday, Strickland and his wife Tess, who both work in medical equipment sales, didn’t show up for a trial on custody of their son, Rivers. The state Department of Children and Family Services accused them of abusing the boy when he was an infant, but a juvenile court judge found no probable cause to arrest the parents back in 2020.
The state child protection agency moved to intervene again when Rivers’ baby sister, Louisa “Lo” Strickland, died in March. The father had taken his 5-month-old girl to Children’s Hospital on Feb. 28 and doctors found she had brain trauma, burst retinas, bruising on her belly and ribs that had been broken weeks earlier. She died March 2.
Daniels declined to comment through a court spokesman, who said judicial rules prohibit judges from commenting on pending cases.
The case has child protection officials and advocates angered and baffled, especially by what they consider the court’s leniency toward Chris Strickland.
“I don't understand why this man, other than he apparently is a white male of privilege, that he is getting all of these accommodations when we see over and over and over again that none of these kind of accommodations are made for poor people or people of color or other similar situations that we've seen in the court system,” said Mary Claire Landry, a child welfare advocate and former director of the New Orleans Family Justice Center.
Prosecutors said Strickland was a flight risk and asked for a $2 million bond in June. Instead, Daniels gave him a $150,000 for the murder charge, $25,000 for the felony child abuse charge.
Strickland’s criminal defense attorney, Sarah Chervinsky, said that is not unreasonable for these circumstances.
“He has no prior convictions, he is a resident of New Orleans, he has appeared for all required court dates and complied with all conditions including surrendering his passport, and the evidence against him in this case is extremely weak,” Chervinsky said.
She said the Stricklands were cleared of any abuse on their son in 2020, and they were being wrongly accused again.
“Mr. Strickland’s arrest is the result of incorrect assumptions based on inaccurate medical science,” Chervinsky said. “It has been a living nightmare for Mr. Strickland to lose his infant daughter and then be wrongfully accused of abusing her. He has only gotten through it with the support of his wife, family, and faith community.”
Strickland has appeared for all court dates in the criminal matter, but there’s a dispute over whether he showed up when he should have for a new custody trial scheduled for last Friday.
Custody hearings in juvenile court are confidential, but WWL-TV was at the courthouse when the Stricklands did not appear for last Friday’s trial. Documents obtained by the station show that Tess Strickland requested a delay in the trial last Tuesday, but it was not approved by a judge before Friday’s trial was to begin.
The document requesting the delay stated it was not opposed by DCFS or the District Attorney’s Office. Sources with knowledge of the proceedings say that’s not true, and that’s why WWL-TV saw DCFS’ legal team at the courthouse Friday. The custody trial has now been pushed back to September.
Meanwhile, the Stricklands’ 3-year-old Rivers is living with his maternal grandparents. Documents obtained by WWL-TV show Rivers also suffered bruising as an infant when his mother brought him to the hospital in 2020.
DCFS attempted to take custody of Rivers then and attempted to place the Stricklands on a child-abuse registry. The parents complained publicly, fought to regain custody and then won an appeal to stay off the abuse registry. A juvenile court judge found there was evidence of abuse, but no probable cause that the parents did anything wrong.
On the contrary, Chervinsky quoted Juvenile Court Judge Mark Doherty’s ruling that stated: "The parents here did exactly what medical professionals ask a new parent to do: if you find something strange with your infant, report it immediately for medical examination. They did exactly that. There is no physical or testimonial evidence in this case against the parents."
DCFS spokeswoman Catherine Heitman said the agency can't comment on its child abuse investigations, but she said the agency is allowed to clarify or correct information that's already been publicly reported. The Stricklands went on WDSU-TV in 2022 to rail against DCFS' handling of Rivers' custody case, so DCFS provided WWL-TV with a summary of how that case relates now to the investigation into Lo's death.
"There was a prior inconclusive investigation that resulted in the victim’s sibling entering foster care for a brief period of time," the DCFS summary says. "The sibling re-entered foster care as a result of this investigation, and remains in state’s custody."
After Doherty’s ruling, DCFS changed its determination of abuse to “inconclusive."
“You can maybe say one is inconclusive, but to have this happen twice within a three-year period,” Landry said. “People need to wake up and understand that there's something seriously of concern in this family.”
According to Chris Strickland’s arrest warrant after Lo Strickland’s death, the father told doctors and other hospital officials that he shook his daughter when he returned from getting a bottle and found her breathing very slowly. The police report also states he called 911 and performed CPR before an ambulance took her to Children’s Hospital.
At Strickland's bond hearing in June, Commissioner Daniels disclosed that he and the Stricklands' defense attorney, Chervinsky, share a law office on St. Charles Avenue. Prosecutors did not ask Daniels to recuse from the case. Chervinsky later clarified to WWL-TV that she and Daniels, a real estate attorney who owns a title company, only share the office space and phone line and are not business partners.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that DCFS put the Stricklands on a child abuse registry in 2020, even after a judge found no probable cause that they committed the abuse on their son, Rivers. While DCFS did notify the Stricklands they would be added to the registry after the judge's ruling, the parents successfully appealed and never appeared on the registry.
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