Whitley Co. Commonwealth Attorney talks impact of cases of murdered children and the death penalty

(WTVQ) — Earlier this week, Brittainy slaughter and Adam Hayes were indicted on charges in connection to the murder of four-year-old Chloe Darnell.
As the family copes with the loss of the child, there are still lingering questions over what happened.

“This case is gonna be very complex, forensically speaking. And when a case is complex for us, forensically speaking, especially with two defense teams, it’s gonna take them a long time to decipher through what we think we can prove and they’ll probably get their own experts and we might get experts to counter their experts,” says Whitley County Commonwealth Attorney, Ronnie Bowling.

Bowling is the commonwealth attorney for McCreary and Whitley counties, a position he has held since 2018.

“This is my third intentional homicide of a child that I’ve prosecuted in five years,” adds Bowling.

While he can’t be too specific in the case of Darnell, “we’ll be analyzing a great bulk of these forensics for 12 to 18 months from now. That is just how DNA, the nature of DNA works. We do have rapid DNA in Kentucky that’s been very that’s been very helpful in solving cold cases and helping old sexual assault cases. But in a case of this magnitude, we don’t use rapid DNA. It’s a huge case and there’s, there’s two people who are facing up to the death penalty. We don’t wanna haphazardly do that, we want, we have an obligation to get it right. So, I mean, we’re not gonna cut any corners on it. It does take time and I know the public grows frustrated with that, I understand, but it, at the end of the day it’s our responsibility to get it right,” added Bowling.

Bowling also says Whitley County leads the state in death penalty cases.

“I’ve concluded five in five years. We have 3 pending right now. Three death penalty cases pending and that does not count these 2 others,” he says.

Adding that if they have a case and move forward with seeking the death penalty, “your obligations in a death penalty case are exponentially higher than a regular case. We’re not gonna make people do that if, if it’s not necessary, if that’s not the road we’re gonna go down and, and with the death penalty. You can go ahead and calendar if you can get a death penalty case tried in four years you’re flying.”

Slaughter and Hayes will be back in court in January.