Plea deal in horrific case of starved Alabama teen kept in basement sparks outrage

By Carol Robinson | crobinson@al.com

A two-year prison sentence for a Shelby County couple who nearly starved their adopted son to death in a locked barren basement has sparked outrage among many. Prosecutors, however, said the couple’s plea was accepted with the victim’s best interest in mind.

Dozens of comments posted to Facebook and Twitter expressed shock at the sentence.

"Unbelievable,'' wrote one woman. “This breaks my heart.”

"Hell is not bad enough for these monsters,'' wrote another. "This is where our judicial system desperately needs reform. These people should never see the light of day again,'' said a third.

Shelby County Circuit Judge William H. Bostick this week sentenced Richard and Cynthia Kelly, ages 60 and 51, to 10 years with two years behind bars for the abuse of their adopted son, 18-year-old Ethan Kelly. The teen was just 14 when he showed up at a hospital weighing less than 55 pounds.

When taken to Shelby Baptist Medical Center on Nov. 13, 2016 and later airlifted to Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham, Ethan was nearly dead.

He was severely and chronically malnourished, dehydrated, suffering from acute respiratory distress, shock, hypothermia, and hypothyroidism. Pictures of the boy taken at the hospital showed pressure sores on his legs and open wounds on his knees. He was non-verbal, had tremors and would likely not have lived much longer.

Ethan’s plight came to light the weekend of Nov. 12, 2016 when Richard Kelly took the boy to the hospital. Ethan was placed on a ventilator for about a week. Doctors, alarmed by his condition, summoned DHR which immediately contacted Helena police. It was just days before Ethan’s parents were arrested on aggravated assault charges. They were held on $1 million bond each before eventually getting out of jail on bond in 2017. The spent about eight months in the county lock up before making bond.

The couple in December 2019 pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of child abuse, which is still a felony. Aggravated child abuse is a Class B felony and child abuse is a Class C felony. While the Kellys attorneys sought probation or time served – arguing that their clients do not intend to have any more children and therefore are not in danger of re-offending – prosecutors sought and won the maximum sentence which allowed under Alabama law for the crime to which they pleaded.

It’s important to note that the Kellys last year entered a “blind plea” which means there was no guarantee to the sentence they would receive. Often in pleas, a sentence is determined ahead of time as incentive for the defendant to plea, but that was not the case here.

Still, many wondered why prosecutors would take a plea at all.

The testimony of a doctor and police detective alone, coupled with the beyond-disturbing images of Ethan’s bedroom and of Ethan hooked up to feeding and breathing tubes in the hospital, should have been enough to convince a jury of the couple’s guilt, commenters have suggested.

Shelby County District Attorney Jill Lee said, unfortunately, that’s not how it always works.

It would have been a risk to move forward with a jury trial without Ethan’s testimony. "A jury would ask, ‘Where is the victim? He’s 18 years old now, where is?'’ Lee said Friday in an interview with AL.com. “Everybody’s a lawyer these days and they want to know.”

“And,” Lee said, "somebody has to say, ‘Who did this? The victim is the only person who can say who did this to him.'’

It’s common for victims to not want to testify.

"You’re dealing with people who are witnesses and who must testify who have already been incredibly traumatized. Frequently when asked, they don’t want to testify,'' Lee said in an interview with AL.com Friday. "Sometimes, like in this case, at a given moment in time, they may not even want their abusers to go to prison. We are left with "We’re going to do what we can do without further traumatizing the victim Lee said.''

"It makes it hard. It makes us look bad sometimes, but we are 100 percent of the time going to do what’s right from the victim,'' Lee said.

"People don’t want to think this happens in a police society and they’re outraged. They should be. Everybody should be mad about that,'' Lee said. “But when it comes down to proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt, it can be hard.”

"But he, (Ethan) showed up yesterday (Thursday), and he did very hard thing and he did an incredible job,'' she said. “I hope he is happy with himself and that it makes a difference moving forward.”

Children’s of Alabama physician Dr. Melissa Peters, who specializes in child abuse and pediatric trauma, testified to a laundry list of physical ailments suffered by Ethan that all stemmed from severe malnutrition. There were no underlying physical conditions, she said, that led to his failure to thrive. "His body was failing in all of the critical ways that keep us alive,'' Peters said. “He was essentially dying.”

Helena police Det. Sean Boczar, the lead investigator on Ethan’s case, testified to the horrific conditions inside Ethan’s bedroom, which had a concrete floor and was furnished with only a fly strip and a box spring – not a mattress. There were two locks and an alarm on the outside of Ethan’s bedroom door. There were two windows – that did not open – with curtains. When the detective was asked to explain the large dirt stains on the window curtains that Boczar broke down and had to take a moment to compose himself. "The dirt stains were from Ethan drying his hands,'' Boczar said. “He was not allowed to use any towels in the house.”

Testimony showed Ethan spent as much as 23 hours a day in that room. He was locked in from at least 11 p.m. until morning when he was allowed a supervised trip to the bathroom before being put back in the room. There was a surveillance camera in the room, but it was not functioning. The purpose, Boczar said, “was to intimidate and have him think they were always watching him.”

A major factor in prosecutors accepting a plea deal in the case is that Ethan at the time did not want to testify against his parents, and even told prosecutors he wasn’t sure he wanted them to go to prison at all, much less for more than two years.

Ethan even testified to that in Thursday’s hearing, saying that last year he was dealing with “self-love” issues that had him just wanting to get the case over.