KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Knox County jury spared a Fountain City mom of a murder conviction Friday in the 2019 death of her 5-year-old child, shot to death at close range as she lay on the couch of her home watching Netflix.
Deliberating a short two hours, the panel convicted Robin Howington, 41, of reckless homicide rather than felony murder. Howington testified Thursday that her 2-year-old son fired the shot that killed daughter Destiny Oliver the night of Sept. 14, 2019.
If she'd been found guilty of felony murder, Howington faced a life sentence. Instead, she's looking at a likely range of 2 to 4 years in prison on the homicide count.
But that's not all Howington is guilty of.
Jurors also convicted her of two counts of aggravated child neglect as well as making a false report, tampering with evidence and attempting to tamper with evidence. Because the victim was under 8 years of age, Howington is guilty of what's called a class A felony, the highest classification in the state.
It carries a range of punishment of 15 to 25 years minimum in prison, according to prosecutors.
Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green set April 19 for sentencing. A background investigation will be conducted on Howington ahead of sentencing.
Green has a range of options in how he sentences her. He could, for example, combine some terms and make others run consecutive to each other.
Howington had been out on bond, but with the verdict Green ordered her to be taken immediately into custody.
She showed little emotion after the verdict was read and she was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Jurors began deliberation about 12:20 p.m. and had made up their minds by about 2:15 p.m. Friday.
Testimony and evidence this week indicated Howington's little boy found the loaded gun in his mom's Balsam Drive home and fired it at his sister from a distance of about two feet.
Destiny likely lived less than a minute afterward, experts testified this week. The bullet pierced her hand, a TV remote and then went through her chest as she lay on the couch, testimony revealed.
Friday began with closing arguments.
Prosecutors Ashley McDemott and Heather Good told jurors the evidence on its face -- and from Howington's own mouth -- showed she was guilty of felony murder. The charge essentially states that the perpetrator is guilty of felony murder while committing another felony -- in this case, failing to adequately protect Destiny.
"We are here because of one person's actions," Good argued.
She continued: "It could have been prevented. It should have been prevented by the one person who had the duty and the responsibility to do so. And like I said, failed miserably at it."
Said McDermott: "In the five years this case has been pending, she has only been worried about herself."
The state contended Howington was criminally responsible for her daughter's death based on her actions and negligence, that she tried to cover several things up, and that she did nothing but tell lie after lie.
Investigators could not definitively say who shot Destiny. Howington denied that she did it.
In the hours after the shooting, she told police first that it was a random man who barged into her house; then that it was Destiny's father; and then that it was her son.
When she took the stand Thursday, she told jurors she'd failed to keep track of the loaded 9mm pistol and that while she was outside smoking a cigarette, her little boy got the gun and fired one shot.
Forensic evidence showed the presence of gunshot residue -- chemicals discharged when a shot is fired -- on the boy's clothes and his mother's dress. An autopsy also showed Destiny was probably shot from about two feet away as she lay on the couch.
On the night her daughter died, while riding in a police car to the hospital, Howington texted an acquaintance that her son had shot her daughter.
At the hospital, she asked a woman in a restroom to get rid of her phone, indicative of her deceptive attempts to avoid police scrutiny. Found on the phone were messages about selling narcotics, previous testimony has shown.
Defense attorney Mike Whalen told jurors from the start that the little boy had fired the gunshot. Howington tried desperately to protect the child, he argued.
"This is a family tragedy that the state is trying to make worse," he said Friday.
Whalen said Howington's inconsistent statements about who pulled the trigger were due to extreme distress because she endured post-traumatic stress disorder from a prior sexual assault. She was in no rational frame of mind, he told jurors.
Howington Testifies
Over the last few days, prosecutors said Howington repeatedly lied and tampered with evidence. For the first time, they had a chance to cross-examine her under oath on Thursday.
On the night of the incident, after the family got home from a day at the park, she said she took her kids inside because they were asleep. She went out for a cigarette and went to move her car because it was obstructing the mail, she said.
“I was walking up to my house and it’s a glass door and see a flash of light go off,” Howington said.
She walked inside and she said she found her 2-year-old son crying and screaming. Destiny was on the couch and the gun was lying on the floor, she said.
“I got the gun and took it outside,” Howington said.
The defense attorney asked her why she took it outside.
Evidence previously showed that Howington was trying to get rid of the gun, which she had dropped outside in a bush.
“Because I didn’t want it to cause more harm,” Howington said.
Prosecutors on Thursday called to the stand Brandon Wardlaw, one of the Knoxville Police Department investigators who questioned Howington back in 2019. The trial turned into a small battlefield, as the defense said authorities mishandled the investigation.
Whalen said from the beginning Howington told them she was raped by an officer and she was scared.
“Then you watch (KPD Investigator Tim Riddle) lose his mind and yell and scream at her. Did you ever stop and say, 'Whoa, whoa let’s talk a minute?' Did you ever say that?" said Whalen.
“No,” Wardlaw said.
Wardlaw said they had a goal that night — to find out who killed Destiny.
The prosecutors also brought to the stand Dr. Amy Hawes, assistant medical examiner and forensic pathologist at the Knox County Regional Forensic Center, who said the gun was held close when it was fired.
Evidence also showed there was gun residue on Howington's dress and on the 2-year-old's clothes.
“I would say the gun was held from a few inches up to a couple of feet away, and it depends on the type of gun and type of ammunition that was used,” Hawes said.
Several different versions of events followed the incident, all telling different stories about who shot her little girl. Howington changed her story from how a random guy came in and shot her daughter, to the father of her child, to her young son.
Now on oath, Howington testified she tried to get rid of the gun to protect her 2-year-old son because he was the one who pulled the trigger.
“Because I knew that was the gun that (the young boy) used to shoot Destiny, and I was trying to protect him,” Howington said.
She said she never thought she would face a murder charge.
“Because I didn’t have anything to do with the shooting of my daughter,” Howington said.
Changing Her Story
As the minutes and then hours ticked by, Robin Howington told lie after lie about what happened to her 5-year-old daughter the night of Sept. 14, 2019.
In an early version of her story, she told Knoxville Police Department investigators when questioned that the child's father had barged into her Fountain City home and fired a gunshot, perhaps in an attempt to scare Howington. Destiny Oliver was lying on the couch watching Netflix when a bullet hit her.
At first sympathetic to her, KPD's Tim Riddle and Brandon Wardlaw changed their stance as they began to see that what she was claiming simply failed to add up. She lied about the gun, the sequence of events before the shooting and especially about what she did, court testimony showed Tuesday.
Then, she switched to telling police her 2-year-old son had retrieved the pistol from a closet and fired the weapon, perhaps in defense of his mother.
And then when police began poking holes in that tale, she finally switched during another sit-down interview days later to insist that the victim's father had come over to her house, she'd gotten the gun, she'd turned on him, they'd tussled and in their struggle for the weapon it went off, fatally striking her daughter in the chest.
Court testimony showed Tuesday that version at least seemed consistent with some of what they'd learned about her relationship with the child's father, including a prior confrontation she'd had with him when she pulled the gun on him outside her Balsam Drive house.
Again and again, she misled the investigators and told falsehoods in an interview after Destiny died from the single gunshot wound to her chest. Destiny also suffered a hand wound from the gunshot, and the bullet appeared to damage a TV remote, court testimony showed Tuesday.
Security camera video from a neighbor helped police build a framework about what happened that night. Once they started comparing it, along with its time codes, to Howington's story, they were able to refute fact after fact.
For one, it showed her getting rid of the gun immediately after Destiny was shot. She tried to hide it under a bush by the house, something she at first denied.
Investigators also went back to her house after questioning her to check her claim that her son had used a stool to reach up into a bedroom close to get the pistol. It didn't add up.
"You keep telling me it's (the 2-year-old boy)," Wardlaw said. "It can't be (the 2-year-old)."
Riddle told her he'd learned that she'd pulled the gun on Destiny's father during an argument two days prior to the homicide, during which he'd taken the gun away from her.
About two things Howington was insistent, the first being: "I did not kill my baby."
She also said multiple times that her daughter never would have been shot if the girl's father hadn't come over to her house that night.
On Wednesday, Howington turned away whenever she saw pictures presented to the jury harking back to her daughter, such as the child's bloody shirt and the couch where she died the night of Sept. 14, 2019.
Forensic evidence offered Wednesday offered signs it could have been an accident.
Forensic experts from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said they found gunshot residue from the shooting on Howington’s dress and on her little boy’s clothes.
That would indicate they were both close to the gun when it was fired, testimony has shown.
"If this gun was found by a child loaded and with the safety off, all they had to do is pull that trigger to fire?" defense attorney Mike Whalen said.
"That is correct, yes," said Ryan Kuykendall, the TBI forensic expert.
KPD lead investigator Tim Riddle said when questioned Howington, the mother lied again and again about who fired the fatal shot. He said she named her 2-year-old son as the shooter in one version of events.
A TBI forensics expert on Wednesday said it was possible – in certain circumstances – for the boy to fire the semi-automatic pistol that killed Howington's daughter.
A video from the day when Riddle and another investigator read Howington's Miranda Rights was played inside the courtroom.
"No, she will be charged," Riddle said in the video. "She will be charged with tampering, that’s tampering with evidence. I’m serious to God, you’re going to go to jail for that tonight. You can lie all you want to, we want the truth from you."
Evidence showed on Sept. 14, 2019, the 5-year-old girl died from a bullet that went through a remote control, through her chest and through a pillow. Now at her trial, Howington's defense attorney said she was a grieving mother who had just lost her child and KPD investigators mistreated her.
Whalen asked Riddle about a policy that says there's a specific timeframe on when an officer involved in a shooting should give a testimony.
"So, off and on police officers get 48 or 72 hours to get their thoughts together and recall things and citizens get whatever time you give them,” Whalen said.
“Yes sir,” Riddle replied.
“In this case, 45 minutes from being told her daughter was killed,” said Whalen.
"We were trying to determine the cause, the motive — was this a domestic?" Riddle said.
The defense said KPD manipulated the story, suggesting to Howington the shooter was the child’s father.
“I don’t think he intended to kill the little girl. I think he was going to shoot and scared the hell out of you, his ex-wife and he said, 'Oh (expletive), I shot the baby,'” Riddle said in the video.
“You’re right, OK, you’re right, OK,” Howington said.
Riddle said they thought it was the father because of his background, which includes domestic violence.
"And we went there based on the database. We do not want anyone that would harm a 5-year-old girl on the streets," Riddle said. "That was what was important to me, and should be important to any human who’s walking or citizen of Knoxville.”
Howington had texted as much to an acquaintance after the shooting, lawyers say. When she called 911 to report that a random man had entered her home that night, her young son could be heard in the background, at times crying.
The trial in Judge Scott Green's courtroom is expected to last all week.
Officer Andrell Cummings, the first Knoxville Police Department officer on the scene, testified Monday afternoon he wasn't sure what he'd find inside the home when he arrived. He'd been dispatched on a shots fired call.
Inside the quiet home, he found Howington sitting calmly on the couch talking to someone on the phone. She pointed toward her daughter's body nearby when Cummings asked who'd been shot, he testified.
When the officer saw the badly wounded child, he scooped her up in his arms and took her outside to assess her condition and wait on an ambulance. By the time he'd determined she was lifeless, emergency medical personnel arrived.
Cummings testified officers checked neighbors to see if they had any security video that would yield clues of what had happened in the house. One neighbor had a camera that showed people coming and going from the Howington home in the minutes before the homicide.
It also appeared to show someone step outside and walk around to the side just moments before Howington called 911. When officers checked around that side of the house, they found the weapon that had been used in the killing, hiding under a bush.
