FORT VALLEY, Ga. — Authorities found 9-month-old Cody Palmer suffering severe head injuries in a recreational vehicle parked outside the Warner Robins Buc-ee's back in 2022. He would later die from his injuries at an Atlanta hospital.
While the parents said that it was an accident, a Peach County jury disagreed.
Nearly three years after Cody's death, his father Christopher Palmer has been found guilty of his son's killing.
They found it wasn't an accident; it was murder stemming from child abuse.
The jury handed their verdict down on Monday: guilty on all counts. He was sentenced by Judge Connie Williford to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to authorities, Palmer and the child's mother, Shelly Rooks, were traveling across the country at the time that Cody died.
The story that Rooks told would soon disintegrate during the course of the police investigation.
According to Rooks, Palmer accidentally dropped Cody into the sink while bathing him and was unresponsive. Police say he was not breathing and was unconscious. The 9-month-old child would never wake up.
Despite Rooks' claims, the injuries appeared to be more serious.
Authorities soon believed that Palmer's cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, caused by Palmer, stemming from apparent child abuse.
"There were injuries that were consistent with abuse. It was not consistent with a child that may have been crawling around at 9 months, crawling on a cabinet or falling off something," Former Police Chief John Wagner said at the time.
They believed that Palmer had struck the child multiple times after the child would not stop crying.
When Palmer's case went to trial, the jury agreed.
On all counts against him, they found Palmer guilty: malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, child abuse and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Rooks was also charged with murder but a judge found that she was unfit to stand trial.
The sentence means that Palmer will spend the rest of his life behind bars. His sentence of life in prison without parole stems from his murder conviction. The additional 10 years stem from his possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.