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MS Coast jury convicts stepfather of capital murder in deadly child abuse of toddler

A Harrison County jury took 45 minutes Thursday to convict Joseph David Heard of capital murder in the beating and suffocation death of his 2-year-old stepson. Afterward, Judge Larry Bourgeois polled the jury to confirm the verdict. The jury will return Friday to determine whether to sentence Heard, 41, to life in prison without parole or death for the Dec 27, 2021, killing of 2-year-old Hayden Lee Bataille. Heard’s wife, Hailey Lynn Bataille Heard, 24, is already serving a life sentence in her son’s murder. The morning of the toddler’s death, Joseph David Heard repeatedly punched the toddler in the gut and the head, and when the toddler cried out in pain, his mother said, the beating only escalated. Joseph David Heard was already angry that morning, two days after Christmas 2021, because the toddler with curly blond hair had soiled his diapers overnight. When Heard felt like the child took too long to get a juice box out of the refrigerator after his bath, the torture began. Ha...