Carrie Lynn Killed by.....

This man Richard Lee Howard, then he buried her behind a garage, where she had to be dug up.

Carrie finally lays to rest 6 years after the brutal beating!

Battered women are three times more likely than nonbattered women to be pregnant when
injured (Stark and Flitcraft, 1996).

· Women who leave their abusive partners are at a 75% greater risk of being killed than
those who stay (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1993).
more statistics

Carrie Lynn decision met with disgust
Friday, June 18, 1999
Rockford bristled Thursday at the prospect of another trial for Richard Lee Howard, the man accused of beating 22 month old Carrie Lynn Gaines to death and then burying her body in a back yard where it lay undiscovered for five years.
"The system stinks, " said Mildred , whose sister lives near the house on Arthur Avenue where the little girl died in 1990.
That was a common reactioon to the ruling by a state appellate court overturning Howard's conviction on a technicality concerning evidence introduced at his trial.
But there are others who aren't so cynical. Steve Haight, for one, said: "I still think it's te best justice system in the world."
Whether the system stinks or is the best, it can't avoid the kind of technicalities that sometimes get convictions overturned.
Those technicalities are what makes the system the fairest in the world, but still they offend people who are disgusted at the thought of a second chance for a man who once faulted the community for taking five years to discover the little body he had buried.
Outcome result of system 'integrity'
In the process of justice, the legal community must look at the rights of the accused which may not please the public.
Rockford -- Lawyers, judges and police officers struggle with technical aspects of the criminal justice system the public rarely sees during a 60 minute episode of "The Practice."
Rules on how detectives investigate and how prosecutors present evidence in court evolve and at times, don't exist. When uncharted situations arise, judges make their best calls. Often, lawyers disagree and appeal to another judge.
Legal proceedings churn at a notoriously slow pace in a society that moves faster all the time.
In other words, the finer points of the law occasionally clash with the public's desire for swift justice.
Such is the case in the 1990 death of 22 month old Carrie lynn Gaines, beaten to death by her mother's drug-abusing boyfriend and buried in a box in a back yard.
The killing went unnoticed for five years, more than twice as long as Carrie lynn's short life.
Now, nine years after the brutal crime and two years since a Rockford jury found Richard Lee Howard guilty of Carrie Lynn's murder, and appellate court has overturned the conviction.
The tragedy that drove a horrified community to establish a haven in her memory and send money for her funeral returned this week with the 2nd District Court of Appeals decision.
A three judge panel in Elgin ruled battered woman's syndrome never should have been raised as an explanation for why Sherri, testifying against Howard, sonspired with him to conceal her daughter's death.
In the appellate court's opinion, the tactic unfairly prejudiced jurors against Howard -- convicted in three hours after a 10 day trial in 1997. The 44 year old church janitor received a life sentence, which he is serving at Menard state prison in southern Illinois.
Police arrived Oct. 24, 1995, at the Arthur Avenue home where Howard discarded Carrie Lynn.
Behind the garage, they found her body, wrapped in a pink blanket and stuffed in a cardboard box.
The events of that night are etched into Janie Posley's memory.
"I was here when they dug her body up," said Posley, who has four grandchildren and lives half a block from where police found the body. She likens the scene to a circus and is still troubled by the slaying.
"That baby was innocent she said Thursday. And what about the appellate court's decision?
Posley's sister, Mildred Hubbard, was quick to answer. "The system stinks," she said. "The system doesn't work."
Next door, L.C. Moore sat in a white wicker chair. He didn't live in the neighborhood when police discovered Carrie Lynn's remains. Like others throughout Rockford, though, he followed the case.
In Moore's eyes, Howard has to be guilty.
"Anybody like this should get the maximum."
But outrage expressed by Moore and others missed the point, said David Taylor, a Northern Illinois University law professor who lives in Rockford, has followed the case and read the appellate court's opinion.-------(I personally say that David, you have missed the point.....where is the justice for this baby girl...even without the battered woman's syndrome...There was enough evidence to still convict Rick Howard, so you tell me....where is the justice....and I still think the system does not work for the victims, only for the criminals.)
"The public thinks the appellate judges are saying, 'Let this guilty guy go free.' But that is not what they're saying at all. What they're trying to do," Taylor said, "is preserve the integrity of the system. They're trying to define what is permissible evidence to use to find this guy guilty."
(But David......they already have permissible evidence, without the battered woman's syndrome, to convict Howard, so why give him another chance....afterall, Carrie didnt get a second chance, she didn't even get a first chance! .....Ok David....maybe I am getting an idea of what you are saying.....So now let me assume, that if he gets a new trial...which he is already going to get.....that by ruling out the battered woman's syndrome, he will be guilty of the murder beyond a shadow of a doubt....Is this what you are saying?....)
State courts in general have held that psychological experts can testify on behalf of defendants or victims --- but not eyewitnessess. And even then, prosecutors cannot resort to such testimony unless it helps clarify evidence jurors might otherwise be unable to understand, or if it comes in response to an attack by defense attorneys on a victim's credibility.
Taylor termed the move by Winnebago County Associate Judge Rosemary Collins to allow testimony on battered woman syndrome a "close call" in a circumstance that never had surfaced before in Illinois courts.
"This case, " Taylor said, "was a classic one of he-said-she-said, and this expert witness told the jury who to believe. That was the problem here."
Winnebago County Chief Judge Michael R. Morrison said criminal trial judges are constantly maneuvering on a slippery slope in the interest of fair and speedy trials.
"In every hearing, we make 10 to 25 rulings and any one of those rulings could be potential grounds for overturning a case," he said Thursday. " We don't always have the benefit of going to the books and looking at precedent. We have moments to make a decision."
But it is "a natural reaction" for citizens to overlook the rights of defendants in such gut-wrenching cases, said State Rep. Doug Scott, the city's former legal director and a ranking Democrat.
"If you or I get a traffic ticket, we've got rights in court and we expect to have those," Scott said. "As the heinousness of the crime escalates, it becomes harder to appreciate what those rights are there for. But that's what the country is built on."
Dan Cain, one of the area's top criminal defense attorneys, agreed.
"These aren't technicalities as far as I'm concerned," Cain said. "anyone can be accused of a crime. The true mark of a decent and free society is how scrupulously we honor the rights of persons who are charged with the most severe of crimes."
One factor at play in the gap between public sentimental and legal reality is the media, said LeRoy Pernell, Dean of the NIU Law School.
Movies popularize a "cowboy mentality" where justice is concerned, while television news allows people to "see horrors more quickly" than the judicial system ever could machinate.
"We haven't always educated the public very well about what our legal principles are, " he said. "But think about the cases we're hearing about more and more every day where innocent people are being released on new scientific evidence that proves they didn't do the crime."
Some people on the street, like Steve Haight, who was soaking up the noon sun on the mall downtown Thursday, recognize the legal system's complexities.
"I think the evidence was pretty clear in spite of the inadmissable evidence," said Haight, who works for the Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau.
But, he added, "I still think it's probbly the best justice system in the world. You don't hear about the ones that don't get overturned." Haight was the exception.
Farther down the sidewalk, bookkeeper Candy Morris sat on a bench, finishing a slice of pepperoni pizza. "It's really upsetting," she said. "It's not just this case, it's all the cases where people get by on technicalities."
As Zonnie Burnell saw it, the justice system probably works 65 to 70 percent of the time. Other times, she thinks, and out come can depend on the lawyer, or even how many cases a lawyer or judge has to deal with.
The bigger the caseload, she figures, the less time someone has to deal with each case. Lynne Ewing agreed. "I'd just like to hear more times where the justice system worked the right way," she said.
But Mary Gaziano, a Rockford lawyer and chairman of the Winnebago County Republican party, said the ultimate power rests with the people because legislators they elect control the justice system.
"There are details in law that are sometimes frustrating to the public," Gaziano said.
"Fortunately, in a free society, we have a process to change laws we find unacceptable. But, in order to preserve the rule of law in an orderly society, we must respect the law as it is written.
"That's basically the premise lawyers operate under," she said. "We don't like everything either, but there's a process."

(As much as I hate this following article, I still have to print it!)
Howard: Community to blame, too
Friday June 18, 1999...written by Judy Emerson
Sitting across from Richard Lee Howard in the small legal library at the Winnebago County Jail, I repeatedly was dumbfounded by his words. Here was a man who had just been convicted of murdering a 22 month old girl by kicking her and throwing her against a wall in a drunken rage.
Neither he nor the child's mother sought medical help for the child, who died the next day. Howard admitted burying the little girl's body annd covering up the crime for more than five years, as did the child's mother.
Now, here was this 6-foot-2, 285-pound man trying to lay part of the blame on the decent people of this city.
"I have to condemn this city because for 5 and a half years, without anybody noticing?"
To which I replied that he could answer that question better than anyone else. He shrugged and looked down with half a smile.
Certainly, we all have flaws, and few of us do as much as we could do to help society's downtrodden people.
But there's not a thing any of us could have done to save poor little Carrie Lynn from the deadly, dysfunctional adults around her. That's frustrating, but it's the truth.
With news that the case may have to be retried comes a fresh wave of sadness and despair about what happened.
The good people of this community reacted to Carrie Lynn's death in a way that may help other abused children. With public and private funding, the Carrie Lynn Center was established to provide shelter and counseling for abused children.
From what we know of Carrie Lynn's short life, she had little contact with people of normal human sensibility.
Her biological father is in prison for sexually molesting a child more than 30 times in six months.
Court testimony indicated that Carrie Lynn's mother, Sherri, abused drugs. Howard was a violent drunk and drug abuser who beat up Sherri and other women. The child's maternal grandparents also were violent substance abusers, according to testimony.
As I sat in the jail listening to Howard, I was struck by his bizarre rationalizations. He claimed to have been a good parent to Carrie Lynn's sister and the son he fathered with Sherri. Father of the decade, if you don't count that thing with Carrie Lynn.
He denied physically abusing the child. He doesn't count the times he spanked her hard enough to cause bruises or the time he tripped her with a booted foot and made her fall and cry. He did it to stop her from running in the house because, he said, she might have hurt herself.
He professed concern for the surviving children's welfare, declaring Sherri unfit to raise them. From prison, he has pursued his campaign to prevent her from regaining custody of the children, which is a possibility. Protecting them has become his passion----second only to protecting himself.
Howard has utter contempt for Carrie Lynn's father, convicted child predator Johnny Gaines, because of the nature of Gaines's crime. Hello?
The aspects of this case that are beyond belief and understanding don't stop there.
What planet were Carrie Lynn's grandparents and other relatives on that they didn't investigate her disappearance?
How in the world could our courts and child welfare system even consider giving Gaines another crack at parenting her two surviving children?
I don't doubt that she is sorry, sorry about what happened----now that everything's out in the open, anyway.
Forgiveness may be found in Heaven and down here, too, but actions still have consequences. I don't think the fact of this case are second chance material.
The children who managed to survive Howard and Sherri deserve to grow up among people who believe what happened to their sister was an aberration to normal behavior. No rationalizations. No excuses. No blame switching.
This community soon could be witness to another trial of Richard Lee Howard. If so, we must hope that justice will be done for Carrie Lynn.
And we should take this opportunity to focus, yet again, on what else we can do to find and help children who are growing up beyond the bounds of humanity.

[Now for my comments on this story!
First of all Judy Emerson needs to get the facts straight before writing her story. She only writes what she wants, which is always the twisted story....but I guess that is what jornalism is all about! After all it does get people's attention!
And it is not known how long she suffered before she died, it was even noted it was anywhere from 1 to 3 days. Reason being is because Sherri was in shock, and had no idea, no concept of time as to how long she held Carrie in her arms. But, I do believe Rick knows how long it was!
In my opinion unless you have walked in our shoes, don't pass judgement on any one in this family. Some people are fortunate to live a life without violence, "like Judy Emerson" so of course she hasn't a clue! But, then there are the less fortunate one's that had to live with it including myself! I won't elaborate on this until a later time, so for now I must get back to the commentary.
Ok as she wrote, neither one sought medical treatment after the beatings, ....Sherri wanted to get an ambulance and Rick threatened the life of her and her unborn baby as well as the 3 year old she also had! Now let me say this, when you are in a situation like this, what exactly are you suppose to do? Fear is your biggest enemy, and even more so, was the fact she needed to protect the unborn baby and her other child, as well as tending to Carrie, not knowing that Carrie was dieing.
Rick being 6 foot 2 and weighing almost 300 pounds, Sherri 3 months pregnant and weighing not even 150 pounds, half his size and 3 months pregnant and getting woke up and beaten until he knocked her out, and Carrie getting woke up and crying because of the commotion gets beat next because she would not stop crying, well, what else do I need to say, except FEAR was a big factor at this time of her life.
Now, I will have to agree when Emerson said that Rick was a violent drunk, and drug abuser...but she left out that he was also a big time dealer, and he was a certified Witch! And yes he abused other women as well as Sherri. Many other women testified to the abuse during the trial, and I believe that his ex-wife and Sherri got it the worst.....no, I take that back, I believe Carrie got the worst.
When Rick was telling her about being a good father.....father of the decade! Well, Rick was good (as he calls it) when he wanted to be, which was not good enough. Especially when you have a toddler running through the house and Rick puts his foot out to trip the toddler making the toddler cry, while he laughs..."father of the decade!) ...Yeah now we all believe that one now don't we. NOT!!!! .. His reasoning on this one, was, because he was afraid Carrie would hurt herself if she didn't stop running!....So let's just kick her across the room and kill her, RIGHT RICK!.....it sure stopped her from running through the house now didn't it Rick!!!!!! YES, Rick I do hate you, for what you did to a member of my family.]
Rick denied any physical abuse on the children...That is what every abuser will say! "He doesn't count the times he spanked her hard enough to cause bruises or the time he tripped her with a booted foot and made her fall and cry. He did it to stop her from running in the house because, he said, she might have hurt herself."
[Let's get to the part where she asks, "what planet are the grandparents, and other relatives from" ?......Isn't it strange that she never mentioned....when Sherri's friend tried to report it, it fell through the cracks. And also, because of all our questions about where Carrie was, only led to Rick taking Sherri and the kids out of State for years.....not to be heard from for years!
What, do you think went through our minds during all this time? Sherri and 3 kids, as we knew it at the time, were missing. We live in a world called REALITY, as we knew it to be. We all knew, that you don't press the issue, until the victims are out of harms way, otherwise you only create more beatings! So, living in our world of violence=or reality, you learn to step back and leave it be, even though it was always on our mind.
And now let's get to where Emerson asks if Sherri should get another chance at parenting her other 2 children. Let me tell you something about Sherri....she may have been slow at getting out of the relationship with Rick, but she did everything on her own, she started on her own to get off the drugs, she went through counseling, everything she did on her own......she didn't wait for the court to tell her what needed to be done, she already knew what needed to be done. She went through parenting classes, and passed it all, which doesnt surprise me....because Sherri has become a very strong person. She cares, and listens to her children, and she loves them deeply. She understands the problems that will arise as the kids get older, as well as the problems that occur everyday because of Carrie's death. And she is strong enough to deal with it now! As Emerson put it.].Forgiveness may be found in Heaven and down here, too, but actions still have consequences....[Sherri found her strength through God, constant prayers to guide her everyday, became a daily part of her life...that is where her strength comes from. So Yes she should have her kids back, this is where they belong! And we all thank God that their foster parents were fantastic people! And they are still a part in their lives, yes, Sherri has the kids back, and she deals with them every day, and the foster parents are also still in their lives, which is the way it should be! They go to counseling, and in time maybe they will be who they want to be other than being victims of Richard Lee Howard!
And the talk about him getting a new trial!!!...Well we all have our fears on this one, Carrie deserves justice, and he is the only one getting another chance, WHAT about Carrie who never had a chance at all? Where is the justice for her? Talk around the town, is that he is going to get out FREE, NO CHARGES...which is the way he said it would be...He threatened the family before and during the trial that if he went to prison, that he would find a way to get out and finish the job, So it looks like he may get a chance of getting the job done afterall! Oh, but none of this is ever mentioned now is it? But we the family will have to always look behind us because of Rick.]

More of this story.....when you see the word "bleepbleep" it is someone on the jury which I don't believe needs to be mentioned here!

2 jurors initially opposed murder
Sunday June 20, 1999
Four who also sat on the panel say the two favored an involuntary manslaughter charge instead.
Richard Lee Howard almost beat a murder charge in his trial for killing 22 month old Carrie Lynn Gaines.
Four jurors interviewed this week by the Rockford Register Star said two other jurors leaned toward convicting Howard of involuntary manslaughter in the early part of deliberations in the 1997 trial.
Eventually, Howard was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. But the conviction was overturned by a state appellate court on grounds that inadmissible evidence was used in the trial. Winnebago County prosecutors said they will ask the Illinois supreme Court to reinstate the conviction, and if that fails they will try Howard again.
The body of Carrie Lynn Gaines was buried in a back yard on Arthur Avenue in 1990 and discovered there five years later on a tip to police.
In an interview with Register Star columnist Judy Emerson after his conviction, Howard admitted burying the body but denied killing the little girl.
The principal witness against Howard was the dead girl's mother, Sherri. She was characterized by prosecution testimony as a battered woman---- to explain her previous silence about her daughters death. The appellate court faulted the trial judge for allowing that testimony.

Jury had no doubts on guilt
Sunday, June 20, 1999
At least one member says a psychologist's testimony was a factor in his judgment.
Rockford---- Jurors knew Richard Lee Howard was guilty, but of what they weren't sure.
As they sat in the small jury room, they took their first vote on a count of first-degree-murder. Ten wanted to convict. Two others leaned toward a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. The difference between the two could mean decades in prison.
"Everbody believed he was guilty," recalled bleepbleep, one of the jurors. "The decision was as to the seriousness of his guilt."
Three hours and 15 minutes later, jurors reached their decision: They found Howard guilty on the more serious charge for kiling 22 month old Carrie Lynn Gaines. A judge later sentenced Howard to life in prison.
But was the jury unfairly swayed by the testimony of a psychologist, who said Carrie Lynn's mother failed to report her daughter's death years earlier because she suffered from battered woman syndrom?
That depends on whom you ask. "I believe she took some pretty good, severe thumpings," said another of the jurors, bleepbleep, a retired truck driver. "If he beat her, he beat those kids. I didn't need the psychologist to tell me that."
An appellate court, however, overturned the conviction and faulted the judge for allowing testimony that may have unfairly influenced jurors---- jurors like bleepbleep.
Bleep, a purchasing agent for (blank) , saw Carrie Lynn's mother, Sherri as a key witness in the prosecution's case. And it was the psychologist's testimony, he said, that changed his opinion of her from one of contempt to one of sympathy.[[ (None of us was looking for sympathy, we just wanted justice....JUSTICE,....... IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR !!!!)]]
I was just amazed a mother could let this happen to one of her children," Bleep said. "I wanted to see her hang, too. But I think the psychologist really kind of exonerated her.
"Would she have been less believable if I hadn't heard the psychologist? Probably."
Last week, after the appellate courts ruling, four jurors agreed to discuss how they reached their decision that September day in 1997.
It marks the first time they've spoken publicly. "I don't go along with battered woman syndrome," said Bleep, a South Beloit grandmother. "I've always felt that no matter what, the mother of a child could not allow those things to happen."
'Central Issue'
During the trial, a pathologist who conducted an autopsy on Carrie Lynn's skeletal remains testified he found evidence the baby girl had been beaten before. Even though Howard admitted to police he hit Carrie Lynn in the past, he said he found her face-down in a bathtub. [OK....Here is my opinion on this one! Sherri, working to provide for her family.....Rick included, she comes home to find Rick trying to give mouth to mouth to Carrie, which is what Rick told Sherri, .....But if Rick claims to be father of the decade, then what was he doing leaving an infant in a tub without him watching her! Excuse me for this next comment, but, Rick can be a daddy, but he could never be a father! He only makes these statements to make it look good for him! Truthfully, there is no good in Rick, as far as I can tell. Basically if Rick was the father he say's he was, then I would not be writing this story now would I.......now back to the story]
That left jurors to weigh the testimony of Sherri, the only eyewitness.
Sherri told the jury that Howard, her boyfriend at the time, slapped Carrie Lynn, threw her against a wall, then kicked her in the stomach, back and buttocks in March 1990.
Carrie Lynn died the next day, Sherri testified. But investigators didn't find her body until 1995, when an anonymous tip led them to a back yard on Arthur avenue. There, police found her body wrapped in a pink or purple blanket and buried in a cardboard box. Sherri never reported the death to authorities, and she wasn't charged.
Mark Karner, the prosecutor in the case, hoped the testimony about battered woman syndrome would explain Sherri's silence and bolster her credibility.
"The central issue in this case clearly was Sherri's behavior, not intervening in the beating of her daughter," Karner said last week. "That the syndrome affected her ability to act ought to be relevant."
Bleep has his doubts.
"She could have walked at anytime and made a phone call," he said. "If she had made a call, we all wouldn''t have been tied up in court."
But bleepbleep said the psychologist's testimony "opened my eyes about the helplessness" associated with battered woman syndrome.
"The psychologist explained why she was incapable of stepping in and intervening." Still, bleepbleep said he thinks another jury, even if deprived of information on battered woman syndrome, would convict Howard. Prosecutors presented enough other evidence to establish a pattern of abuse, bleepbleep said.
"From what I recall, there were always people crashing at their pad," he said. "Those witnesses talked about the way he humiliated and tormented the children.."
Lasting impressions....
The judge's decision to allow the psychologist's testimony was a first in Illinois courts. Before then, no judge had ever allowed experts on psychological syndromes to testify on behalf of witnesses---only on behalf of victims or defendants.
Bleep said the psychologist's testimony made no difference in helping him convict Howard----"absolutely none whatsoever."
Judy W...., a Rockford teacher's aide who also sat on the jury, said the expert testimony had no effect on her, either.
"When I heard the evidence and heard (Howard) speak," W...... said, "there was no question in my mind."
In overturning the jury's decision, the appellate court agreed the prosecution's case was strong enough to convict Howard of first degree murder.., without the psychologist's testimony.
And that frustrates jurors. "I don't think it's right," said W.... "When I left, I felt really good. I felt that little Carrie Lynn had been put to rest."
But jurors weren't so sure as they worked toward their verdict. They weren't immediately convinced Howard should pay the ultimate price for his crime. some feared a guilty verdict on first degree murder might mean the death penalty for Howard----a punishment too harsh for what he claimed to be an inadvertent death.
"At first, we didn't feel like it was premeditated----we didn't see a deadly weapon," bleep bleep said. "But we thought about it, and his hands were lethal weapons to that little girl."
The case has left lasting impressions with the jurors. "I think about it all the time," one juror said. "Every time I read about a child being hurt, I can't fathom it."
When bleepbleep thinks of the case, she thinks of her granddaughter.
"It bothers me a lot to see someone do this to a child," she said. Bleep said he watches a good deal of legal programs on television, so he wasn't too surprised to learn the appellate court reversed the conviction on what he considers a minor point.
"If I were totally ignorant of the law, I'd just be fuming," he said. "But what occurred, occurred. If the judge did something wrong, they're going to have to run him through another trial. That's all."
Bleep called his time as a juror a "very demoralizing experience to understand that human beings can do this to each other."
In the two years since the trial, bleepbleep's disdain for Gaines has not worn away.
"I don't feel sorry for her," he said. "That girl has to live with herself. "The little baby didn't have a chance. She did."

continued