Jerice Hunter sentenced to life in prison in Jhessye Shockley's murder

Matthew Casey | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption EXCLUSIVE: Behind the Jerice Hunter investigation Glendale police Detective Roger Geisler discusses details of the Jhessye Shockley disappearance and subsequent Jerice Hunter investigation with reporter Matthew Casey.

Jerice Hunter, the Glendale mother convicted of killing her 5-year-old daughter, Jhessye Shockley, has been sentenced to life in prison. The girl's body has never been found, but police believe her body was stuffed in a suitcase and left in a Tempe garbage bin.

The sentencing marks the conclusion of a case that began in October 2011, when Hunter told police that Shockley had disappeared from her Glendale apartment. She did not react when Judge Rosa Mroz read the sentence Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

During the trial, prosecutors had portrayed Hunter as a liar and manipulator who, after serving a prison sentence in California, used law enforcement to take Jhessye from loving relatives. They argued that Hunter never developed a maternal bond with the girl described by her teacher as "bubbly" and an "emerging leader."

While prosecutors Jeannette Gallagher and Blaine Gadow said it could not be determined how or when Hunter killed Jhessye, they told jurors she put the girl's body in a suitcase and then conned a neighbor into driving her to Tempe so she could sell items Hunter had claimed were inside.

The state won convictions of child abuse and first-degree murder against Hunter despite the lack of an eyewitness to Jhessye's killing or the discovery of the girl's body.

Prosecutors presented jurors with evidence that contradicted defense attorney Candice Shoemaker's portrayal of Hunter as a desperate mother whose years of incarceration while awaiting trial had prevented her from working on what was most important: finding Jhessye.

Hunter's daughter and Hunter's ex-lover testified about Hunter's corporal punishment of Jhessye. The daughter lashed out from the witness stand at the people she believed tore her family apart—police, prosecutors and a state agency that separated her from her siblings—but also described Jhessye being forced by Hunter to live in a closet.

The ex-lover told the court about hearing Hunter beat the child over spilled Play Doh.

The state appeared to be veering into minutiae when it painstakingly laid out Hunter's numerous excuses for Jhessye missing more than two weeks of kindergarten before the girl's disappearance. But those became key details when one of Hunter's relatives testified that Hunter had asked him to drive Jhessye to school on one of the days Hunter told school officials that the girl would be absent from school because of ringworm and pink eye.

Hunter's request became more significant when the relative told jurors that the girl he drove to school wasn't the one whose picture flashed across television screens as part of a missing-person search that went national.

The defense called just two witnesses and took just one day to present Hunter's case.

The first witness struggled to recall details and was seen as ineffective.

The second, a grandmother, presented herself as having a photographic memory. The woman described in detail having seen a girl she identified as Jhessye just hours before Hunter reported the girl missing.

The woman testified that she went outside her apartment, near 45th and Glendale avenues, to smoke a cigarette, saw Jhessye and tried to help her. But the girl was upset, had been crying and fled toward the intersection where the woman told jurors she saw her get into the passenger seat of a dark sedan that sped away, the witness said.

Hunter's family speaks on sentencing Hunter's family speaks on sentencing

While the woman's testimony validated Hunter's story that she'd discovered Jhessye missing after returning from an errand on Oct. 11, 2011, it didn't contradict Jhessye's sister's statements about seeing Jhessye bruised, unable to walk and losing her hair while locked in her mother's closet.

Nor was the defense able to explain the large blood stain detectives discovered underneath the closet's carpet, a stain forensic examiners determined was likely Jhessye's blood.

The jury of seven men and five women reached the guilty verdicts in late April. Hunter has maintained her innocence since Glendale police identified her as a suspect about a month after Jhessye disappeared.

The jury also decided Hunter had committed fraud against the community when she pleaded for help in bringing her daughter home.