Paisleigh Williams

Following a weeklong trial, a Cody man was cleared of a first-degree murder charge in connection with the 2021 death of his 2-year-old daughter.

A panel of 12 Hot Springs County jurors deliberated for a few hours Friday before unanimously finding Moshe B. Williams not guilty. He was released from custody that afternoon.

Park County prosecutors alleged that Williams, 33, “recklessly inflicted physical injury” by failing to seek timely medical care after Paisleigh suffered a forceful blow to her abdomen that severed her bowels; the state said that amounted to child abuse and caused Paisleigh’s death, but jurors rejected the felony charge.

In contrast, Williams’ former girlfriend, 31-year-old Carolyn Aune, was convicted of first-degree murder in April and received a life sentence for her failure to seek medical care for Paisleigh.

Deputy Park County Attorney Jack Hatfield contends it was Aune who dealt the fatal blow to the toddler’s stomach, and although jurors specifically rejected that allegation at Aune’s trial, he continued to make that argument at Williams’ trial.

Authorities had no direct evidence that Aune had abused Paisleigh and she testified that she never hurt the child. Instead, Aune testified that she saw Williams stomp on the child’s stomach on the evening of March 26, 2021. She offered to testify against him last week, but Hatfield, who worked to dissemble her account at her trial, did not call her as a witness.

Williams’ court-appointed defense attorneys, Dylan Rosalez of Casper and Curtis Cheney of Worland, did not call any witnesses and rested after the state presented its case. 

In his closing argument, Cheney argued that if “someone else beats your child, then you take your child for help,” it’s not child abuse, according to the Cody Enterprise’s account. He also argued Williams didn’t realize his daughter had been seriously injured. Hatfield, meanwhile, argued that Williams was too slow to seek care.

Dr. Kathryn Wells, a child abuse expert at Children’s Hospital Colorado, testified at Aune’s trial that Paisleigh would have been “very, very, very sick for several hours if not more than a day.”

“And I think a reasonable caregiver would have tried to seek care for her,” Wells said.

Around midday on March 27, 2021, Williams told a friend that Paisleigh had been beaten from “head to toe” and was throwing up. When the friend told Williams to take the toddler to the hospital, Williams responded, “I’m a black man, I can’t do that. They’ll think that I did it.”

He did take Paisleigh to West Park Hospital that afternoon, but her condition had deteriorated to the point that her life could not be saved. A quicker response could have saved her life, Wells testified last spring.

In interviews with Cody police, Williams and Aune both denied knowing how Paisleigh had been injured and cast suspicion on each other. Authorities came to suspect it was Aune, in part because she’d begun watching Paisleigh in 2021, taking care of the toddler and her own children while Williams was at work. Weeks prior to her death, Paisleigh had suffered a broken clavicle and prosecutors suggested it may have also been the result of abuse.

Williams’ attorneys had expressed concerns about his mental fitness last year, but evaluators found him competent to stand trial. Hatfield predicted in July that he and Williams’ attorneys would reach a plea deal, but that didn’t happen.

Presiding District Court Judge Bobbi Overfield later decided moved Williams’ trial to Thermopolis over concerns that the extensive publicity about the case in the news and on social media would make it hard to find an impartial jury in Park County.

Aune contends that she was wrongfully convicted and has vowed to appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court. She remained in the Park County Detention Center on Monday, awaiting transport to the Wyoming Department of Corrections.

Williams, meanwhile, is free. After being unable to post a $1 million bond, he served more than two years and seven months in jail while awaiting trial.

(Editor's note: This story has been correct to reflect that Curtis Cheney made the closing argument on Moshe Williams' behalf. The source of the quote, the Cody Enterprise, had initially attributed the remarks to Dylan Rosalez.)