A 25-year-old father of three who pleaded guilty to murder for the death of his youngest, a 4-month-old boy who died of blunt head trauma, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Samuel Bryon Kennedy was charged in the death in February last year after he shook the boy, Cody Kennedy, in their West End Tacoma apartment. Kennedy took his son to a neighbor who called 911, and the infant was unresponsive when Fire Department personnel arrived.
The boy was brought to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, and a scan of his brain revealed bleeding and other injuries consistent with abusive head trauma, according to court records. He died the next day. The Pierce County Medical Examiner later determined his cause of death was blunt head trauma and classified it as a homicide.
On Monday, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Joseph Evans handed down a sentence at the high end of the range for defendants prosecuted in similar cases, 220 months.
The punishment was a year shorter than prosecutors had recommended. According to court records, the state asked that his sentence include a 12-month enhancement because the offense was aggravated by Kennedy using his position of trust or confidence to commit the offense, and the defendant knew or should have known his son was particularly vulnerable or incapable of resistance.
Evans allowed Kennedy to have supervised contact with his two other children while incarcerated, and he received credit for the year and two months he's served in the Pierce County Jail while awaiting the resolution of his case. Kennedy does not have any prior criminal convictions.
Kennedy suffered a traumatic brain injury in football practice when he was 13 years old, and his attorneys from the Department of Assigned Counsel asked that the court consider that and his age at the time the offense as mitigating factors. An 82-page report was submitted to the court detailing Kennedy's upbringing and early adulthood.
"Throughout adolescence and adulthood, he has suffered significant cognitive impairment, mood disorders, and frequent recurring seizures," an investigator wrote in the report. "On the day of the incident which led to his charges, he and his spouse believe he experienced another seizure episode."
Kennedy's wife and his father spoke at his sentencing hearing Monday, according to court records. In the defense's mitigation report, Kennedy's father said his son becoming a father in 2021, when his first child was born, brought them closer together. His brother described Kennedy as patient, kind and caring.
Prosecutors alleged in charging documents that the incident that led to the infant's hospitalization occurred while Kennedy was home alone with his children. The 4-month-old had been sick with a high fever for several days, records state, and he was sleeping in a rocker while Kennedy sat on the couch.
In interviews with Tacoma Police Department detectives, Kennedy said his other son woke the infant by throwing a plastic bottle at him. Kennedy allegedly said he became frustrated and shook the infant, causing him to start gurgling. Kennedy brought his son to a downstairs neighbor for help, and the two performed CPR on the infant before 911 was called.
"I didn't mean to kill him," Kennedy told police, according to charging papers. "He demonstrated how he shook the victim, which the detectives described as shaking the victim 'vigorously, back and forth.'"
The infant's mother told detectives she took the infant to a pediatric urgent care in Gig Harbor two days before the incident because he had been fussy. She was told the infant had an ear infection and was given Amoxicillin, which gave her son a temporary rash. She returned to the clinic and was given a different antibiotic.
Kennedy and his wife moved to Tacoma from Idaho in early 2022 when she was pregnant with Cody Kennedy, according to the defense's mitigation report. Kennedy worked as a boiler operator at the former WestRock paper mill. The two met in the summer of 2019, and they married in Idaho in January 2023.
Idaho Republican state Rep. Clay Handy attended the wedding, and he reportedly told an investigator for the defendant's attorneys that he saw Kennedy had a strong desire to be a good husband and father. Handy was a friend of the defendant's grandfather and a bishop at the Latter-day Saints church Kennedy attended. Kennedy also worked for the legislator's trucking business for about a year.
"I'm not a judge, but I hope there is leniency," Handy said, according to the defense's report. "There's no justification for it, but I don't know what you can teach [Samuel] that he doesn't know already."
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