A woman in Georgia has been found guilty on 21 counts by a jury, after just two hours of deliberation. The charges relate to the death of her partner’s 8-year-old child with autism and the abuse of her other two children.
The accused, Brittany Hall, still has to face trial for the death of Amari Hall. However, Celeste Owens has already been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with an additional 235 years. This comes after the jury convicted her on various charges, such as malice and felony murder, aggravated assault, cruelty to children, making a false statement, and concealing the death of another individual, as reported by WAGA. The sentences are to be served consecutively.
During the sentencing, Gwinnett County Judge Angela Duncan expressed shock at the severity of the crimes. She referred to the actions as the most abhorrent and wicked acts she has witnessed throughout her career. Judge Duncan emphasized that Owens would spend the rest of her life behind bars, ensuring she never had the opportunity to inflict such cruelty and evil on another person.
Brittany Hall reported her daughter missing on November 20, 2021, prompting an intense search for the girl. Her body was found three days later in a wooded area miles from her home, as CrimeOnline previously reported. Court documents said that Owens hit the girl in the head several times on November 19, then “conceal[ed] the death of Amari Hall by placing her in trash bags and dumping her body” with Hall’s help.
Owens was charged with several child cruelty charges stemming from incidents involving other children in the family allegedly caught on security cameras. Hall is also accused of hitting and slapping the other children.
Hall initially said that Owens was responsible for all the abuse and her daughters death, but investigators soon learned otherwise, including from interviews with Hall’s other two children.
“My heart is empty. I miss Amari every day,” the victim’s grandmother, Barbara Wright, said during the sentencing hearing immediately following the verdict, according to WAGA. “My heart is broken in millions of pieces that I have not been able to put back together,” she said.
Owens’ defense attorneys called no witnesses and instead tried to sell the jury on a lack of evidence that their client was responsible for the murder. But prosecutors presented testimony from witnesses and even some video evidence. And Gwinnett County Associate Medical Examiner Dr. James Claude Upshaw Downs testified that the little girl died from multiple blunt force injuries “in multiple locations, in multiple stages of healing” and that malnutrition and battered child syndrome contributed to her death.
