Jury Is Given Case of Man Accused of Killing Nephew

A Superior Court jury began deliberations Thursday on whether a Fountain Valley man is guilty of first-degree murder in the strangling death of his 15-month-old nephew.

Deputy Public Defender Marri Derby told jurors in her closing arguments Wednesday that Sherman Robert Corwin Jr., 21, suffers from mental illness and at most should be found guilty of manslaughter in the suffocation death of Thomas Negri on Oct. 14, 1989.

Corwin was baby-sitting the infant and a 4-year-old niece for his sister and her husband, Cheryl and Greg Negri of Fountain Valley. The Negris testified that they came home from dinner that night to find the child’s lifeless body in his crib and Corwin gone. Their daughter was unharmed.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton told jurors that the killing of the child was “premeditated” and that Corwin then faked a mental illness in an unsuccessful effort to escape a murder charge.

Both sides agreed that the most damaging evidence is a taped confession in which Corwin told police that he attempted to strangle and suffocate the child at least three times to stop him from crying.

Throughout the seven-day trial, the prosecution contended that Corwin resented baby-sitting for the Negris because the chore kept him from doing other activities. According to court testimony, Corwin lived with the Negris for three months before the killing and had periodically baby-sat the children.

Derby told jurors that Corwin suffers from a mental illness that causes sporadic “rushes of pain” in his head.

A psychiatrist testifying for the defense last week told jurors that Corwin suffers from recurrent major depression, which causes him to experience the rushes of pain or “peaks of dysphoria.”

Corwin was suffering from one of these “peaks,” Derby contended, the night he allegedly suffocated his nephew.

Prosecutor Middleton, however, said there was no evidence to show that Corwin was suffering from mental illness that night.

“There’s nothing to establish a connection between (Corwin’s) depression and what he did to the child,” Middleton said Thursday in an interview. “Even if he was suffering from depression at any time in his life, at the time that he killed Thomas Negri, he was following some kind of organized plan that he had as to how to kill” the toddler.