RICHMOND, Va. -- Initially pleading guilty to two lesser charges in her nephew's abuse and neglect case, Tori Jackson Hope asked to speak to her attorney before returning to the courtroom with tears in her eyes and reversing that decision. She then asked to be tried by a jury.
Jackson Hope is charged with two counts of abuse and neglect of an incapacitated person. That person is her nephew, Trey Hope.
Trey Hope has autism and cerebral palsy and is non-verbal.
He was 26 when he was taken to Chippenham Hospital on July 17, 2020, with injuries so severe he had to be resuscitated twice.
Trey's legal guardian, his mother, died in January of 2020 and his aunt and uncle, Tori and Carnell Hope, had taken him in to live with them. Their home was just a few doors down from his mother's house.
Jackson Hope's trial got started around 1 p.m. on Tuesday after a 12 person jury and one alternate was selected. The jury is made up of 11 men and three women.
In their opening arguments, prosecutors told the jury that Jackson Hope abused and neglected Trey so severely that he ended up in the hospital with 13 fractures, burns all over his body and had lost more than 30 pounds in six months.
Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Allison Winsott said Jackson Hope quit her job to care for Trey. When COVID struck, Trey's day programs closed so he was with Jackson Hope 24/7.
On the day Trey ended up in the hospital, Winsott said Carnell Hope arrived at work at around 6:50 a.m. and did not leave work until after 7 p.m., suggesting he could not have had anything to do with Trey's injuries.
Jackson Hope was "the only adult caretaker in the home with him" that day, Winsott said.
But defense attorney Vaughan Jones argued that Jackson Hope did not harm Trey. In fact, he said her husband, Carnell Hope, who was Trey's mother's brother, told her they were taking in Trey and she didn't really have a say in the matter.
He said the couple had an adult child and two kids under the age of five in their home when they took in Trey.
"Then COVID happens and everything stops being options for the Hopes. Social service people were not willing to go in the home," Jones said.
He said Jackson Hope noticed Trey losing was weight and tried to help and even took him to the doctor in June of 2020.
Jones said she put Trey in the shower after he defecated on himself and left the bathroom momentarily and when she came back in she found Trey looking "different". Jones said she then told her husband what happened and they both took Trey to the hospital.
He argued Jackson Hope did not have the knowledge or understanding to care for Trey, and the commonwealth would not be able to prove she caused his injuries to any degree of certainty.
The first witness the prosecutors called to testify was Trey's former caseworker at the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority, Jessica Lawson. Lawson said she was required to do face-to-face visits with Trey every 90 days, but when COVID struck, those visits became remote.
She said she spoke with Jackson Hope monthly over the phone and one time by Zoom in March of 2020 when she says Jackson Hope showed her the back of Trey's head and it appeared he was sitting on the floor playing with toys.
Lawson said Jackson Hope never indicated to her that she was overwhelmed, that Trey was having trouble with eating or that he had injured himself.
The only concern, according to Lawson, Jackson Hope ever raised was that Trey was not toilet trained.
Lawson said when she visited Trey in the hospital he was "unrecognizable."
The jury also heard from the trauma surgeon at Chippenham Hospital who treated Trey when he first arrived. He said Trey "looked dead," had no blood pressure and had no heartbeat.
Once Trey was resuscitated, the doctor found that Trey was "extremely malnourished," and had multiple fractures and burns on multiple parts of his body. He said he would "usually see this amount of injuries from a car crash at 60 miles per hour."
The doctor also opined that it would have taken at least two weeks of no nutrition at all to get Trey to this level of malnutrition.
When asked if Trey's burn patterns were consistent with a shower, he said "no, everything would be burned if from a shower".
A former forensic investigator with the Richmond Police Department also testified.
Tyler Spillane walked the jury through the pictures he took at Jackson Hope's home that showed dried blood on the walls, and wet blood on bedding that was on the floor of one of the bedrooms.
The pictures also showed holes in the wall. Spillane said two of the samples he collected matched Trey's blood.
The trial resumes Wednesday at 9:30 a.m.
