A Kemmerer babysitter who beat to death a 5-year-old girl in 2022 does not get a new trial because she failed to prove that a judge damaged her case by having a key hearing while she was in the hospital, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
A jury convicted Cheri Marler on May 10, 2024, of first-degree murder and child abuse in the beating death of 5-year-old Annabelle Noles, who’d been in Marler’s care for weeks in late 2022.
Lincoln County District Court Judge Joseph Bluemel that June sentenced Marler to life in prison without parole.
The Wyoming Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Marler’s conviction as lawful after Marler claimed Bluemel violated her rights by holding a key hearing without her while she was hospitalized during the case.
The court also ruled that Kemmerer Police Department and other investigators did not interrogate her illegally.
The Day She Died
Marler called 911 on Nov. 25, 2022, to report that 5-year-old Annabelle Noles, whom she’d been babysitting for two months, had fallen down the stairs in Marler’s home.
Police came to find the girl unresponsive, bruised on her face and body, with bald patches on her scalp, and swelling to the back of her head.
Emergency personnel rushed the little girl to the hospital, and she was later flown to emergency care in Utah.
Meanwhile, police asked Marler to come to the Kemmerer Police Department for an interview. Investigators had doubts about Marler’s account of the girl falling down the stairs.
Kemmerer Police Chief Mike Kahre urged Marler to tell the truth.
That’s when she confessed to beating the girl with kitchen utensils and slapping the girl’s head between her two hands, according to video footage of her confession played during her trial.
When the little girl came to apologize for being difficult, Marler kicked her in the chest to get her away.
Doctors would later find multiple broken bones on the girl, including her jaw and vertebrae.
“I’m a f***ing horrible person for hitting a f***ing child,” a sobbing Marler had told Kahre.
Marler said the girl’s mother, Kayla Kartchner, dropped Annabelle and Annabelle’s little sister off in late September and didn’t come back for them.
She said she was upset that the mother wouldn’t visit with the girls, and she had financial worries of her own.
On Nov. 26, 2022, Annabelle died.
Court Without Her
Marler, via her defense attorney Elisabeth Trefonas, argued to the court in 2023 that her confession to Kahre was involuntary.
Her police interview was lengthy, she was under heavy medication and in pain, and she was desperate for the interview to end, Trefonas argued on Marler’s behalf.
Marler did not attend the hearing where she had the chance to argue these points because she was at the emergency room.
The defense attorney floated the notion of Marler appearing by video, saying the woman could “stay at the hospital dressed for court (if she) needed to be here.”
But neither defendant nor attorney specifically requested it, according to a Wednesday ruling by the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Bluemel was apprehensive about Marler not appearing, according to a transcript of his statements contained in the ruling. He checked the rule contouring a defendant’s constitutional right to be present at critical stages of court proceedings, and also noted that the defense didn't object to holding the hearing without Marler.
Not An Interrogation
The state called police witnesses, and the attorney cross-examined them on Marler’s behalf.
Bluemel ruled that Marler’s confession to Kahre was voluntary, that she wasn’t being interrogated illegally when she confessed to killing the little girl.
The high court agreed.
Foundational to the Wyoming and U.S. justice systems is the constitutional right not to be compelled to testify against oneself. But that’s not what happened here, says the Wyoming Supreme Court’s order.
“The physical environment (at the police station in 2022) was not coercive. The interview occurred in an unlocked room, and she was told she was free to leave anytime,” says the order, adding that police gave Marler her Miranda rights.
She got up to smoke and use the bathroom. She confessed while she was outside smoking and talking to Kahre, then walked back into the police station and described in more detail how she’d beaten the girl, the high court’s opinion says.
She was heavily medicated and in pain, but she was lucid and coherent, it adds.
On appeal, Marler argued that she didn’t voluntarily waive her right to attend that hearing, and that the court violated her right to appear by holding it without her.
About Waiving Rights
The Wyoming Supreme Court focused its analysis on whether Marler knowingly and intelligently waived her right to be at that key hearing.
That’s unclear, and the high court couldn’t go so far as to say that Marler truly waived that right under the proper legal standards, its opinion says.
But, her absence from the hearing was ultimately harmless, the high court added.
That’s evidenced by Marler’s attorney saying she “was not expecting any testimony” from Marler.
“That statement reflects a tactical decision by the defense,” says the order.
That indicates, the high court added, that the attorney intended to rely on her cross-examination of the state’s witnesses, not by a testimony of Marler’s.
Even if Bluemel made a mistake by holding the hearing without Marler — and the high court leaves it uncertain whether he did — it was harmless in the end, says the opinion.
“Assuming the district court committed constitutional error by conducting the suppression hearing in Ms. Marler’s absence, we hold that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” the order says.
The high court denied Marler a fresh prosecution and trial.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
