The courthouse at Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, on March 12, 2024. A noncommissioned officer at Vilseck is standing trial on a murder charge in the March 2022 death of his 5-month-old son. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
VILSECK, Germany — Military prosecutors accused an Army noncommissioned officer on trial this week for murder of fracturing his infant son’s skull in a fit of rage two years ago after the child would not stop crying.
Sgt. Brandon Livingston, assigned to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, is charged at court-martial with murder, aggravated assault, battery of a child and obstruction of justice in the death of his 5-month-old son Kaleb on March 5, 2022.
Opening statements were delivered Tuesday in the courtroom of Lt. Col. Thomas Hynes at Rose Barracks in Vilseck. The trial is scheduled to continue through next week.
Livingston faces a minimum of life in prison with the possibility of parole if found guilty of murder by an eight-member panel of officers and senior enlisted members. The defense has suggested that his wife, Lilli Livingston, abused the child.
“The life of Kaleb Livingston ended in one moment of rage and frustration,” prosecutor Capt. Jacob Watts said Tuesday. The government will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Brandon Livingston caused the child’s injuries, he said.
Emergency services personnel were called to Livingston’s home in Vilseck around 1 a.m. after the soldier reported discovering his son in distress, Watts said. The boy was taken to a German clinic in Weiden where he was treated for blunt force trauma to the head, a skull fracture and brain hemorrhaging. He died a short time later.
The main entrance gate at Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, is shown March 12, 2024. A soldier from the base is charged with murder in the 2022 death of his infant son. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
Doctors found evidence of rib and leg fractures that showed signs of healing, which pointed to a pattern of abuse, Watts said.
Both Livingston and his wife were arrested by U.S. military police, Oberpfalz police told Stars and Stripes previously. German prosecutors accused Lilli Livingston, a German national, of failing to prevent the abuse.
She was convicted last year of negligent homicide by omission and received a suspended sentence of one-and-a-half years of probation, her attorney Joerg Jendricke said in August.
Lilli Livingston accused her husband of abusing the child at least three times in the couple’s home in the Amberg-Sulzbach district, Bavarian news site Onetz reported at the time. She is expected to testify for the prosecution later this week, Watts said.
Brandon Livingston appeared stoic Tuesday as he entered the courtroom in his dress uniform. The prosecution’s case centers on eyewitness and expert testimony as well as his own statements to Army Criminal Investigation Division agents, establishing that Kaleb was in his father’s care when the deadly blow was struck, Watts said.
Maj. James Kiernan, an attorney for the defense, pointed out that Lilli Livingston’s story about the timeline of events had changed over time and that she was the child’s primary caregiver.
“If you can’t rule her out, that’s reasonable doubt,” Kiernan said several times during his opening statement.
