CHARLESTON, W.Va. –The jury for the Sissonville couple charged with child abuse, neglect and human trafficking will start deliberations Wednesday morning.
Prior to the jury deciding to reconvene Wednesday, the closing arguments bringing in a full courtroom Tuesday afternoon.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers presented 60 pages of instructions Tuesday morning to the around a dozen-person jury who has been overseeing the trial for Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Ray Lantz, which started January 14.
This was followed by an entire afternoon of closing arguments between state prosecuting attorney’s and the attorney’s representing Whitefeather and Lantz.
The couple– who was arrested from their home on 225 Cheyanne Lane in Sissonville on October 2, 2023, after two of their five adoptive black children were found locked in a shed– face a 20-count indictment.
The counts the couple face include human trafficking, violation of civil rights, use of minor children in forced labor, gross child neglect, and child abuse charges.
Both Lantz and Whitefeather each face four separate counts of these individual charges based on their four of five adoptive children who the charges apply to.
Individually, Whitefeather faces a total of 19-counts of the above-listed charges while Lantz faces up to 20-counts.
State prosecuting attorney Chris Krivonyak first presented a recap of the images and text messages that have previously been presented to the court in the days prior that includes evidence of the children constantly having to do labor on the family’s farm; two of the children being locked in the Sissonville shed and forced to sleep on the floor and use the bathroom in a camping toilet, while the two younger children were forced to stand on a tarp for hours on end in an upstairs bedroom; and evidence of the couple feeding the children only peanut butter sandwiches which they sometimes deprived them of.
In addition, the evidence shows the couple calling the children offensive racial slurs and remarks, the use of bear spray by Whitefeather to spray the children, and Lantz berating, cursing at and even hitting or threatening to hit the children.
In previous testimony, Whitefeather and Lantz claimed that they treated their adoptive children this way because the oldest boy was severely mentally unstable, and they were protecting the family from him as he was a danger to them all.
Expert testimony since has argued that while the oldest boy has been diagnosed with several mental health conditions, the couple’s case was highly embellished. Krivonyak said it was just an excuse for them to be abusive and neglectful towards the children.
“It is the dehumanization of these kids so that there’s something less than human that enables one person to treat them like they did,” Krivonyak said.
Most of the evidence presented took place from when the family moved to Sissonville in mid-May of 2023 to when the couple was arrested in early October 2023, but some was taken prior to that during the family’s time living on their Washington state ranch.
One of the more telling images presented to the court Tuesday that was found by the West Virginia Fusion Center from Whitefeather’s confiscated cell phone depicts Lantz holding up a PVC pipe and aiming it at the oldest son as if about to hit him with it.
Kriovonyak also referenced some of the videos that have been presented to the court throughout the 10-day trial such as the one taken at their Washington home of Lantz yelling, cursing, berating and threating to hit the children.
In that video he has another pipe and is hitting a picnic table with it. Krivonyak said both the image of the pipe and the earlier video present very telling evidence that he did, in fact, hit his son.
“He said he didn’t hit him, but you also remember, he said he didn’t hit him with the smaller PVC pipe, remember, banging it on the table, it wasn’t a swing like this, but he was swinging that thing,” he said.
Another he referenced Tuesday was of Lantz waking up his 9-year-old daughter to get her shoes so she could use the bathroom.
“She can’t find her shoes at 4:14 in the morning to go to the bathroom right next door, he’s throwing the F curse at her for not having her shoes, at 9-years-old?”
That video was taken from the couple’s Arlo surveillance cameras they had set up in the Sissonville home and the shed to watch the children.
Whitefeather could face up to four child abuse charges for spraying the children with bear spray while Lantz faces child abuse charges for hitting the children.
Whitefeather’s attorney, Mark Plants then provided his closing arguments. He said there were inconsistencies with some of the evidence.
Plants said there could be difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the two children were locked in a shed because they were forced to work as the state asserts, as well as any civil rights violations against the children’s race.
“On the first twelve counts, human trafficking, forced labor, civil rights, is there a doubt in your mind that Jeanne and Don obtained or maintained labor and services from the kids by locking them in the room?” Plants asked the jury. “Or, did they mistreat them because of their race?”
He asserts that the couple’s actions had nothing to do with the children’s race, but more to do with the fact of the oldest son’s severe mental illness.
Plants said the couple was not racist, plain and simple.
“Racist people don’t adopt five African American kids, they don’t take them on vacations, and they certainly don’t take them to therapy or counseling,” Plants said.
Tuesday evening, John Balenovich, Lantz attorney gave his closing arguments.
One of the big things he touched on was stating the fact that the state had no evidence to prove that Donald Lantz was racists toward the four children.
He even went back to when the children testified. Saying that the state is relying on three things.
“All three children agree that he’s not racist, it just doesn’t ring true,” Balenovich said. “Again, there’s a lot of half-truths, assumptions and horror stories.”
Another big point he made was that Lantz was trying his hardest to get the help for the oldest boy to deal with his mental health issues because they made attempt after attempt to get him a bed.
Lantz was the one who took him to all of his doctor’s appointments and therapy sessions.
Balenovich said that CPS dropped the ball when it came to get getting help for both Whitefeather and Lantz.
“Don has to do all of these things on his own because CPS does not help, CPS did nothing, they let them down,” he said.
He even pointed out that Lantz was trying to get more support from Minnesota in order to get the boy into a bed themselves instead of having to rely on CPS’s help.
Madison Tuck, state assistant prosecuting attorney went next, giving the state with their final closing argument.
She said that all the defense has been doing is talking a lot about and blaming the oldest boy and his mental health issues instead of talking about their clients.
She recalled one of the Arlo surveillance videos that was shown, where the oldest girl told the boy that he seemed to get blamed for everything. She said that it has continued to happen throughout the trial because the defense claims that the decline in his mental health caused the decline of their family.
In Balenovich’s closing argument he said that the reason the state only had the videos from September 28 to October 2 was because it was part of some sting that they had going on.
Tuck disputed that in her closing argument.
“The defense is trying so hard to discredit the Arlo videos, because they allow you to see, with each and every pair of your eyes, the horrific treatment and isolation of the kids, you can’t change what’s on their, even though there trying to discredit them,” she said. “And again, we only have five days’ worth of videos, not because of some deceit, but because they only paid for the subscription that would save a week.”