Charles City man sentenced for up to 50 years in prison for death of infant son

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A Charles City man who a jury found responsible for the death of his infant son was sentenced last week to up to 50 years in state prison, despite an outpouring of support from family, friends and coworkers.

Judge James Drew in Floyd County District Court on Friday sentenced Shane Michael Morris to “an indeterminate term, not to exceed 50 years” on the charge of child endangerment resulting in death, a Class B felony.

Morris had been charged with first-degree murder, a Class A felony, but the Floyd County jury of seven men and five women convicted him on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, which is an included offense under an indictment for first-degree murder.

The jury found him guilty of the child endangerment charge, which became the more serious charge after the jury decided against a murder conviction.

In addition to the prison term, Drew also ordered Morris to pay Nicole Hauser, the mother of the boy, pecuniary damages of $150,000.

Morris, now age 27, was charged in March 2020 with killing his 3½-month-old son, Xander, who had died at a Mayo Clinic hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, on Aug. 4, 2019.

The boy developed problems breathing early in the morning Aug. 3 while he was under Morris’ sole care, and Morris took him to Floyd County Medical Center. The boy was flown to a Mayo Clinic hospital where it was determined he had a skull fracture and swelling of the brain. Later that evening, Mayo doctors told the family the boy would not recover, and artificial life support was turned off the next afternoon.

On the evening that the boy was taken to Rochester, Morris told an agent of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation who had traveled there to investigate the incident that Morris had fallen while carrying the baby, striking Xander’s head on a countertop and then falling on top of the boy.

An autopsy was performed at the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office on Aug. 5, and concluded the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and the manner was homicide, meaning it was inflicted by another person.

In a Floyd County trial that lasted a week and a half, the prosecution made it a point to emphasize that Morris had not given his explanation of what happened to anyone at the Floyd County Medical Center, to any of the doctors or nurses who had been treating Xander all day at Mayo, or apparently to anyone else until pressured to come up with an explanation by the DCI agent.

Much of the evidence presented by the prosecution and the defense was by medical experts and the doctors who treated Xander, about whether it was possible that Xander’s injuries could have come from a fall as Morris maintained, or whether they were the result of a deliberate act.

At the sentencing hearing Friday, letters by 34 people, including Morris’ girlfriend, the mother of Xander, were entered into the record, extolling Morris as a kind, loving, calm, generous person who would not intentionally hurt his son.

Earlier this month, Morris’ attorney, Judith O’Donohoe of Charles City, filed a motion asking the judge to enter a motion for acquittal and order a new trial.

She argued that because the jury had found Morris guilty of involuntary manslaughter, it was deciding that he unintentionally caused the death. If the death was unintentional he could not be convicted of child endangerment resulting in death, because that charge required finding that Morris “acted with knowledge that he was creating a substantial risk to the health and safety of X.M., yet committed the act.”

“These findings are contradictory and cannot stand as a matter of law,” she wrote, while also raising several other arguments about decisions that had been made by the judge during the trial regarding evidence and actions by the prosecution.

In a motion resisting O’Donohoe’s motion, Floyd County Attorney Rachel Ginbey wrote that there was ample evidence presented for a jury to reasonably find the guilty verdicts that it did.

She also wrote that although Morris may not have intended to cause his son’s death, resulting in the involuntary manslaughter conviction, he had acted in a way that created a substantial risk that he knew could result in death, and that action did result in the boy’s death, creating the required elements of the child endangerment conviction.

“It is clear from the verdicts that the jury did not find the defendant credible in his claim, some 14 hours after the injury to X.M., that the injuries were due to an accidental fall,” Ginbey wrote.

Judge Drew ruled against O’Donohoe’s motion before issuing his sentence.

Also in his rulings Friday, Judge Drew noted that he was sentencing Morris only on Count 2, the child endangerment charge, because Count 1, the conviction on involuntary manslaughter, was merged into Count 2 under the “one homicide” rule.

Case law has established in Iowa a rule that prohibits a trial court from entering judgments and imposing sentences for multiple homicide offenses if the defendant was convicted for killing only one person.

“Thus no judgment can enter for the lesser offense,” Drew wrote.