Joseph Ray Daniels, a 35-year-old man sentenced to life in prison for the tragic killing of his five-year-old autistic son, Joseph Clyde Daniels III, has filed an appeal following his conviction in Dickson County, Tennessee. In 2021, Daniels confessed to beating his son to death and was convicted by a jury on multiple charges, including second-degree murder, first-degree felony murder, aggravated child abuse, making a false police report, and tampering with evidence.
In his appeal, Daniels claims the trial court made a mistake when it denied his motion to suppress his confession. He argues that the State did not adequately support his confession, which he asserts was made outside of court. He also alleges that a video recorded after a polygraph test, where he admitted to the killing, was obtained through coercive interrogation techniques and a promise of leniency.
On the morning after the incident, Daniels reported his son missing. However, the circumstances leading to the child's death were alarming. According to testimony, the defendant beat his son after the boy accidentally urinated on the bedroom floor. The victim's eight-year-old brother stated that after his younger brother was beaten, he later heard a loud noise later that night and found his brother lying on the ground while Daniels, the father, stood over him. The older brother never saw the victim alive again afterward.
In court documents, Daniels lied about the events that night, but later admitted to physically assaulting his son for five to ten minutes, throwing him on the floor and hitting him repeatedly until the child became unresponsive. He also claimed that both his wife and older son witnessed the beating, and he allegedly threatened his son to keep quiet about what he saw.
Two days after the investigation began, Daniels confessed to law enforcement that he had beaten his son to death and disposed of the body. He indicated that he placed the child's body in his car trunk, drove to a remote location, and left it in a field. But despite extensive search efforts by authorities and volunteers, the body was never found.
While reviewing the case, Judge Camille R. McMullen affirmed the trial court's judgments but noted a clerical error regarding the conviction of count one, which incorrectly recorded it as first-degree murder. The court has remanded the case back to the trial court to correct this error and officially recognize the conviction under count one as second-degree murder, according to the documents filed on Monday with Court of Criminal Appeals in Nashville, TN. No other segments of the trial, conviction and sentence will be changed.
