After 11 years in prison, Columbus couple’s charges to be dismissed in infant daughter’s death
A Columbus couple found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in their infant daughter’s death will soon be free from prosecution after nearly 12 years in prison.
District Attorney Mark Jones has filed motions to drop all charges against Ashley and Albert Debelbot, convicted in October 2009 of killing their newborn daughter McKenzy.
Jones decided to dismiss the case after the Georgia Supreme Court on Feb. 28, 2020, overturned the Debelbots’ convictions, ruling they did not get a fair trial because their attorneys were ineffective.
Jones filed motions March 29 to drop the charges because of “insufficient evidence and the interests of justice,” according to court records. Superior Court Judge Arthur Smith III has set an April 13 hearing.
“It’s a tough decision any time you dismiss a case,” Jones said in a phone interview, adding he felt that reasonable doubt of the couple’s guilt now existed because of “mounting medical evidence.”
While overturning their convictions, the state Supreme Court granted the Debelbots a new trial. Jones said he saw no value in retrying the case with the current evidence, and with so many other demands on his office.
“I don’t see how we have time to invest in it,” he said, noting that the husband and wife together already have spent almost a combined 24 years in prison.
“Twenty-four years, that’s a long time,” he said.
The history
The Debelbots met and married in the Army, and Fort Benning brought them to Columbus. Their daughter McKenzy was born May 29, 2008, at Martin Army Hospital, and released the next afternoon.
The parents had an apartment on Buena Vista Road, where they found a lump on the baby’s forehead early on June 1, and took her back to Martin Army. She was pronounced dead there at 3:55 a.m.
A medical examiner said McKenzy died of trauma from a blow or series of blows to the head. Because the child solely was in her parents’ care after she left the hospital, both were charged with murder. They were tried together from Oct. 26 to Oct. 29, 2009.
Defense attorneys since have argued McKenzy was born with a brain deformation. From 2014 to 2017, the Debelbots sought a new trial as their appeal lawyers argued the couple’s trial attorneys were deficient in failing to call expert medical witnesses.
Among those involved in the appeals were the Georgia Innocence Project, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit’s public defender office.
In unanimously overturning the convictions, the state Supreme Court last year cited the prosecutor’s misstating the measure of proof necessary to overcome the “reasonable doubt” a juror needs to justify a vote to acquit.
“You don’t have to be 90 percent sure. You don’t have to be 80 percent sure. You don’t have to be 51 percent sure,” the prosecutor said.
This was inaccurate, yet the Debelbots’ defense attorneys, Bill Mason for the husband and William “Sandy” Callahan for the wife, did not object, and that was enough to grant the couple a new trial, the court ruled.
Both defendants were released on bond in July 2020, as they await a final decision on dismissing the case.
Albert Omenged Debelbot is 35 now. He started serving his life sentence on Dec. 21, 2009, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Ashley Deone Debelbot is 36, and started serving her sentence on Dec. 16, 2009, records show.