Tattiyona Wilson mug shot (LVMPD) and exiting court last week (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
A 29-year-old mother in Nevada will not spend any additional time in prison after initially being charged with the murder of her 2-month-old son, who died with multiple fractures in his skull and a “foreign object” in his mouth more than three years ago.
Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones last week ordered Tattiyona Wilson to serve a sentence of three years on probation for her role in the September 2020 death of young Xaden Jackson, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Wilson was initially arrested in October 2021 and charged with one count of open murder and three counts of child abuse, with authorities alleging that she caused the fatal injuries to her son. An autopsy conducted by the Clark County Coroner’s Office on Sept. 28, 2020, determined that the child’s death was a homicide resulting from blunt force trauma consistent with abuse. The infant suffered three separate skull fractures, one of which authorities said appeared to have been inflicted within 72 hours of his death.
Jones handed down the sentence after Wilson pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse resulting in death.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Dena Rinetti told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the seemingly lenient plea deal and sentence were the result of “issues with the case.” Specifically, Rinetti told the newspaper that a medical examiner who testified during Wilson’s preliminary hearing told the court that the victim’s fatal head injuries could have been the result of a single blow as opposed to being struck multiple times.
That testimony, according to Wilson’s public defender Edward Kane, bolstered his client’s claim that one of her other young children inflicted the head injury on Xaden.
“The fact that the other child was responsible for this wasn’t something that was dreamed up by my client and her husband at a later date,” Kane said during last Thursday’s sentencing hearing, per the Review-Journal. “It was mentioned by both of them at their very first interview.”
In the plea agreement, Wilson reportedly took responsibility for Xaden’s death even though she did not directly harm the boy.
“I am asking the court to place my client on probation for the offense to which she has pled guilty, which is failure to keep her child safe, failure to protect her child,” Kane reportedly said.
The judge reportedly agreed with Kane, emphasizing that Wilson not supervising her children was akin to killing one of them.
“The court has to consider what does justice look like?” Jones reportedly said from the bench. “Is the idea of losing a child worse than whatever I’m going to do today?”
Wilson told police that on the day Xaden was killed, she was watching a football game on TV and fed the child at halftime. She then put him in his crib for a nap and fell asleep herself. She noted that the baby was faceup and nothing else was in the crib other than a blanket.
She later woke up to her oldest son calling for her in the baby’s room. When she went in to investigate, she found Xaden, who she described as “limp” and “warm.” She then told her husband to call 911.
Wilson “repeatedly denied harming the baby” in initial police interviews, saying she “had no idea what could have caused Xaden to die,” according to court documents.
As investigators continued to press for answers, Wilson’s story about the circumstances surrounding Xaden’s death allegedly continued to change.
During an Oct. 2, 2020, polygraph test administered by the FBI, Wilson allegedly said that she woke up, heard Xaden crying, and found her oldest child “standing on top of” the infant. She reportedly told police she changed her story because she was “nervous” and may have been confused about the day’s timeline. She later said she wasn’t sure if the older child harmed Xaden but reportedly said it was a possibility. The reports say Wilson did not pass the polygraph test, but polygraph results are generally and oftentimes not admissible in court because they are not inherently reliable. Statements made during polygraph exams, however, are frequently admissible.
“(A detective) confronted Wilson again about changing her story when she spoke with (a witness,)” police wrote in the report. “Wilson advised that she had never been through an incident like this before. She changed her story because it ‘was a lot.’”
Should Wilson violate the terms of her probation, she could be required to serve a suspended sentence of four to 10 years in a state correctional facility.
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