Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509170014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Simone Ann Ayton picked up her infant son from the baby sitter the afternoon of Nov. 1, he was sleeping peacefully.
If the 7-month-old woke up later and started crying, Ayton told the sitter, it "was going to be war."
That night, Ayton - who had earlier told social workers that her son's crying made her angry to the verge of violence - put Darius Akeem Ayton in a bathtub and held him under the water until he stopped struggling.
"There is no crime more heinous than the murder of your own baby," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch said Friday in asking that Ayton, 23, receive a 40-year prison sentence, the maximum for second-degree murder.
But Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein set Ayton's punishment at 18 years in prison after hearing half a day of testimony about how the mildly retarded, physically handicapped, socially outcast woman struggled to raise a child alone in her Northwest Roanoke apartment.
Abandoned by the child's father and shunned by her family, Ayton "tried her best at being a good mother" in the months that led up to Darius' death, Assistant Public Defender John Varney said.
But an organic brain disorder that impaired Ayton's ability to control her temper, combined with her cerebral palsy and other mental and physical problems, made her "momentarily lose control" just long enough to drown her son during a few stressful minutes, Varney said.
"We have never contended that she didn't know right from wrong," he said, "but she was significantly unable to conform her actions to what is right."
Ayton, who reads and writes on a third-grade level, and whose right arm is shriveled and useless from cerebral palsy, saw her baby as the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal life, Varney said.
Yet "the shortcomings that made her so ostracized and outcast and prompted her to want this child so badly," he said, "are the same ones that contributed to her killing this child."
Ekirch presented a far different picture of Ayton - that of an unloving mother more concerned with her own needs than her child's, a violent woman who had made hints of what might happen if she was pushed too far.
Last April, Ekirch said, Ayton told a Health Department nurse: "I just don't trust myself...I just can't take it when [Darius] cries. I get bored playing patty-cakes with him. I want to keep my two-bedroom apartment, and they will take it away from me if I don't have him."
Court records show that, before the drowning, Ayton had talked about being frustrated with her son's crying and failure to eat, and that she expressed concerns that he did not like her.
When Darius was just 22 days old, he was admitted to Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley suffering from a high temperature and dehydration. A judge later issued an emergency removal order after finding that Ayton was "emotionally unable to care for her child."
Several weeks later, Ayton petitioned the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court to regain custody of her son - even as she vacillated in discussions with social workers about whether she really wanted him back.
After several months of court hearings, counseling and home visits by the Department of Social Services, a social worker recommended that Ayton be granted full custody.
A judge allowed Darius to return home with his mother Sept. 12; less than two months later, he was dead.
After calling 911 the night of the drowning, Ayton first told police that her son died accidentally when he slipped from her lap into the bath water. She confessed the next day, saying she held him under the water after growing increasingly frustrated with his crying and yelling. In April, she pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.
Citing Ayton's conflicting stories about what happened, Ekirch called her a "cold, calculating, manipulative and self-centered person who has been dishonest from the beginning."
"Justice would not be served if the defendant were sentenced to anything less than the maximum sentence," Ekirch said.
In pronouncing sentence, Weckstein said he understood "the role that Ms. Ayton's handicaps played in bringing her to the place she was on Nov.1."
The judge sentenced Ayton to 40 years in prison, but suspended all but 18. He also ordered that she be placed on probation for at least 30 years on her release.
Ayton did not testify Friday. A pained expression remained fixed on her face throughout the four-hour hearing, and she broke down in tears several times - including when she listened to the tape of her 911 call to a police dispatcher, who instructed her over the phone in a futile effort to revive the child.
Although she did not testify, Ayton pulled a sheet of legal paper from her Bible and read a prepared statement when Weckstein asked if she had anything to say before she was sentenced.
"I constantly dream about my son every night," she told the judge.
"My son was my life, without him, my life is nothing...There is nothing but darkness in my life...I have been punished every day and night for my son not being able to share his life with me."
Varney said Ayton's greatest punishment will be having to live with her guilt "until the day she dies - probably alone. Just as she was before Darius was born."
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