Man convicted in death of 2-year-old Kane Friess-Wylie denied motion for early release
The man found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2017 death of 2-year-old Kane Friess-Wylie appeared in St. Clair County Court Wednesday to request a release from prison.
Gyasi Campbell, 26, was convicted in August 2019 during a bench trial overseen by Judge Dennis Doyle. The charge was reduced from first-degree murder, as was sought by the prosecution. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
At the hearing, Campbell’s public defender Madelyn Daley argued that Campbell should receive credit for the 487 days he served of pretrial electronic monitoring. She also mentioned that, in the Illinois Department of Corrections, Campbell had been attending a lifestyle program, earning academic credits and was enrolled in a fathership class.
“He is not a risk to the public,” Daley said, saying he was a perfect candidate for parole.
But Judy Dalan, representing the state, argued that the provision in question stated that credit was allowed for home detention, but did not specify whether electronic monitoring fell within the bounds.
Doyle denied the motion, stating that he “did not have authority” to make the decision based on Campbell’s behavior, and that the basis for his denial was that the provision did not specify whether electronic monitoring was available for credit.
At the time of Campbell’s sentencing, his then-lawyer, Justin A. Kuehn, didn’t offer a sentencing recommendation, instead saying he trusted Doyle to be fair and reasonable in the decision.
St. Clair County Court Circuit Judge Zina Cruse was originally assigned to try the case, but recused herself from it in November 2018. No reason was given. Doyle, a Monroe County judge, was assigned in her place.
On April 13, 2017, Kane Friess-Wylie was left in the care of Campbell, the boyfriend of Kane’s mother Lindsey Friess, at their shared apartment in Belleville while she had dinner and went grocery shopping with a friend.
At his 2019 sentencing hearing, Campbell said that he was more than Friess’s “live-in boyfriend,” but a father to Kane. He said he loved Kane and that Kane loved him.
Friess testified during the trial that she had asked Campbell to give Kane a bath while he was home. When she came home a few hours later, she said, she found Campbell cradling an unresponsive Kane like a baby.
Under testimony during the trial, Friess said Campbell gave conflicting accounts of how the boy was injured.
Initially, she said he told her that Kane had taken a tumble out of the bathtub and onto the bathroom floor. On later occasions, he said Kane fell in the bathtub and then that he fell off a table after his bath.
Kane was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville, where the emergency room doctor concluded he needed surgery for a head injury. The toddler was airlifted to Cardinal Glennon’s Hospital in St. Louis, where he would later die after an unsuccessful operation.
Dr. Erin Ely, the medical examiner who performed Kane’s autopsy, testified that injuries to the toddler’s brain were inconsistent with a fall of less than 6 feet which led her determination that the manner of his death was homicide.
Another expert, Dr. Maria Teresea Tersigni-Tarrant, who examined Kane’s bones following his death, concluded that a fracture in the occipital bone on the back of his skull was caused at or near his time of death. She said there were no old or healing fractures on his body.
But Kuehn and defense attorney Derek Siegel argued that the prosecution could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Campbell intended to kill Kane, a requirement for a first-degree murder conviction.
Kuehn suggested his client instead be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Campbell chose not to testify during the trial.
This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 3:15 PM.
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