TWO-YEAR-OLD LAILA DANIEL DIED FOUR MONTHS AFTER ENTERING FOSTER CARE — HER FOSTER MOTHER WAS SENTENCED TO LIFE PLUS 40 YEARS

Two-year-old Laila Marie Daniel was placed in foster care with her four-year-old sister in 2015 in the hope that the children would have a safe and stable home.

Four months later, Laila was dead.

Her foster mother, Jennifer Rosenbaum, was ultimately convicted of felony murder and multiple counts involving the abuse of Laila and her older sister. She was sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years.

Rosenbaum continued to maintain that Laila’s death was accidental. In October 2024, however, the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld her convictions, rejecting arguments that her trial lawyers had been ineffective and that a conflict involving her joint representation with her husband required a new trial.

LAILA AND HER SISTER ENTERED STATE CARE

Laila and her older sister, identified in court records by her initials, were taken into the custody of Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services in April 2015.

Laila was approximately 21 months old at the time, while her sister was four.

The girls were initially placed with experienced foster parents.

Jennifer Rosenbaum, who had herself spent part of her childhood in foster care, later became interested in taking the children into her home. She and her husband, Joseph Rosenbaum, sought approval to care for the sisters.

Court records show that the Rosenbaums were ultimately approved as “fictive kin” caregivers, a category used by Georgia DFCS for people considered sufficiently close to a child to be treated similarly to relatives for placement purposes.

The decision would later become part of wider questions surrounding how the girls were placed in the home.

THE CHILDREN HAD ONLY BEEN WITH THE ROSENBAUMS FOR MONTHS

Laila and her sister moved into the Rosenbaums’ care in July 2015.

According to evidence presented in the later criminal case, the girls subsequently suffered a series of injuries.

The Supreme Court’s 2024 opinion said evidence at trial showed that both children had sustained numerous bruises and injuries that prosecutors argued were inconsistent with the explanations given by Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum.

The court record also states that Laila had an older fracture to her right tibia and a more recent fracture to her left arm.

The injuries later became an important part of the prosecution’s case.

THE FINAL DAY

On November 17, 2015, Jennifer Rosenbaum called 911 and reported that Laila was choking on a piece of chicken.

Emergency responders arrived shortly before 6pm.

Laila was unresponsive.

Despite attempts to revive her, she could not be saved and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

According to the Supreme Court’s account of the evidence, Rosenbaum told authorities that she had attempted the Heimlich maneuver and other emergency measures because she believed Laila was choking.

The family later learned that the medical evidence pointed to a very different cause of death.

MEDICAL EVIDENCE REVEALED FATAL INTERNAL INJURIES

The court record states that Laila had suffered blunt force trauma to her torso, resulting in a lacerated liver and a transected pancreas.

The injuries caused severe internal bleeding.

Medical professionals also observed extensive bruising across different parts of her body.

According to the evidence presented at trial, the bruising could not be explained by the resuscitation attempts described by Rosenbaum.

Investigators concluded that neither choking nor improper resuscitation was responsible for Laila’s death.

The prosecution argued that the injuries were the result of abuse.

Rosenbaum and her husband maintained that Laila’s death had been accidental.

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD SISTER WAS ALSO INVOLVED IN THE CASE

The case did not concern Laila alone.

Prosecutors also presented evidence relating to the physical abuse of her older sister, who was four years old at the time.

The 2017 indictment eventually contained 49 counts against Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum.

Jennifer faced charges including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and cruelty to children.

Joseph faced separate murder and child-cruelty charges.

The criminal trial lasted approximately three and a half weeks.

JENNIFER ROSENBAUM CONVICTED

On August 1, 2019, a jury found Jennifer Rosenbaum guilty on most of the charges against her.

She was convicted of felony murder, along with multiple counts of aggravated assault, aggravated battery and cruelty to children.

She was acquitted of some of the charges, including malice murder and two felony-murder counts.

The sentence was life imprisonment plus 40 years.

Her husband, Joseph Rosenbaum, was also convicted of multiple offenses and received a total sentence of 60 years.

At the time of the verdict, Laila’s biological mother, Tessa Daniel, became emotional.

She had previously known Jennifer Rosenbaum from their own time in a group home and had been comfortable with Laila being placed in the Rosenbaums’ care while she worked to overcome addiction.

After the convictions, Tessa said she had spent years blaming herself for what happened to her daughter.

She said she no longer felt she had to blame herself because she had never harmed Laila and had loved her deeply.

ROSENBAUM APPEALED HER CONVICTIONS

Jennifer Rosenbaum later challenged her convictions.

Among her arguments was that her trial lawyers had been ineffective because they did not request a jury instruction concerning justification.

She also argued that she had been affected by an actual conflict of interest because she and her husband had been represented jointly.

The case eventually reached the Supreme Court of Georgia.

On October 15, 2024, the state’s highest court affirmed the trial court’s decision.

The justices concluded that Rosenbaum’s lawyers had not been constitutionally deficient in the way she claimed and that she had knowingly and voluntarily waived any potential conflict associated with joint representation.

Her convictions therefore remained in place.

QUESTIONS ABOUT CHILD PROTECTION

Beyond the criminal case, Laila’s death also raised difficult questions about the systems intended to protect children in state custody.

A separate federal lawsuit brought by Laila’s family examined aspects of the children’s placement.

Court records in that litigation state that DFCS had approved the Rosenbaums as fictive kin after a background-check process.

The records also indicate that the previous foster mother had raised concerns to DFCS about the children’s supervision during overnight visits with the Rosenbaums before the placement.

Those records have become part of the broader history of a case in which a child who had entered state care for protection later died in the home where she had been placed.

A CASE THAT HAS LASTED FOR YEARS

Laila’s death happened in November 2015.

Her foster parents were indicted, tried and convicted several years later.

Jennifer Rosenbaum’s appeal continued through the courts until the Georgia Supreme Court’s October 2024 ruling.

Throughout the criminal proceedings, Rosenbaum disputed the prosecution’s account of how Laila died.

The courts, however, upheld the jury’s verdict and her sentence.

Laila was only two years old when her life ended.

Her case remains a painful reminder of the vulnerability of children in care and the profound consequences when systems intended to protect them fail to keep them safe.