Mother accused of brutal murder of 7-year-old NYC child could be dragged to court after skipping hearings: 'Enough is enough'

The Bronx mother accused of murdering her 7-year-old daughter in a tragedy that shocked the city in August 2021 could be called to trial, an exasperated judge said Wednesday – after the man accused of murder skipped her second hearing in a week.

Navasia Jones – who refused to leave a Department of Corrections bus on Monday – this time made it up six flights of stairs to a waiting room just outside the courtroom, but did not move any further.

“She refuses to come out,” a state court official said after Judge Joseph McCormick heard Jones' case in Bronx Supreme Court on Wednesday morning.

“What is your statement?” the judge then asked.

“She doesn't want to come out – 'I don't want to get out of there,'” the officer replied.

The judge then moved the case one step closer to trial by setting September 9 as the date for a pretrial hearing – and said he would sign an order allowing officers to physically drag Jones into court if she again refused to surrender to justice.

“Enough is enough,” a Bronx detective told the Washington Post after learning about the courtroom antics of the judge accused of murder.

“This woman must be held accountable for this horrific crime today,” the detective added.

The murder trial of Jones and her son, 20-year-old Paul Fine, has been stuck in the Bronx's notoriously slow court system since they were arrested in June 2022 for the murder of little Julissia Batties a year earlier.

The case was scheduled to go to trial in May, but justice was delayed after Fine, who is accused of beating his half-sister to death and sexually abusing her, was assigned a new attorney this month, court records show.

The new attorney, Deveraux Cannick, said Wednesday that he still has not received evidence from the Bronx district attorney's office to which he is entitled.

“Of course I read newspaper articles, but nothing more,” Cannick said in court.

The delays have infuriated Julissia's father, Julius Batties, who has sharply criticized authorities for giving him empty excuses for stalling the case.

“Three years and nothing?” the heartbroken father told the Post this week. “She's in prison, but that's nothing, that's not justice. It's as if she never murdered my daughter.”

Edward Sapone, Jones' court-appointed attorney, said he was “confident” that Jones would appear at the September hearing, where he would try to prevent prosecutors from presenting Jones' “incriminating” statements to police to the jury.

“I believe she will be here on September 9 because she wants to be here,” Sapone said outside the courtroom.

A prosecutor's office representative said prosecutors plan to see Jones then, too.

“We expect the defendant to appear in court at the next hearing and we are ready to proceed with the trial,” said Eric Steltzer, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

— Additional reporting by Larry Celona