Accused child killer denied bail

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - A judge has denied bail for a man accused of killing his girlfriend's 6-year-old son, after most of the evidence against him was thrown out for being illegally obtained.

Superior Court Judge Judith Savage heard 30-year-old Michael Patino's bail request on Wednesday morning. Patino's lawyer says he has been behind bars for three years and should be allowed out because of Savage's ruling last week.

The attorney asked that Patino be released on a $20,000 surety bond.

A log of the text messages in question was obtained by Target 12 from the Superior Court case file and is part of what Judge Judith Savage called "a tsunami of illegal evidence collected by Cranston Police."

Because of the judge's ruling, the jury won't see any of them.

• Read more: Read Judge Savage's Ruling

Patino is charged with the beating death of Marco Nieves . Nieves died on October 4, 2009.

The log of text messages contains a heated conversation from the evening before between Patino and Nieves’ mother Trisha Oliver, who was his girlfriend at the time.

“I punch dat lil ***** 3 times,” Patino texted in all capital letters in one instance according to the log. “Da hardest 1 was on his stomach cuz he moved. But let him b a man and not a lil ***** like u.”

Judge Savage ruled that Patino had a reasonable expectation of privacy and that text messages collected by Cranston Police from his cell phone were gathered illegally.

In her 190 page decision, Judge Savage admonished several details of the investigation, including how detectives used text messages during a three hour interrogation of Patino on the day Nieves died. Police had yet to obtain a search warrant for the information they used during the questioning of Patino.

Court documents indicate Patino and Oliver exchanged messages about how Nieves was sick and throwing up repeatedly while also telling his mother that his stomach hurt.

“Of course he is gonna be all hurt and cryin,” Oliver texted. “Cuz u ****** beat the **** out of him.”

Oliver texted that Nieves' 'eyes keep rollin in the back of his head’.

In another text, Patino suggested that she should ‘rub his stomach’ and give him ‘water wit lemon’. As the evening progressed, Oliver texted that her son was still sick, asking Patino this; “WT* did you do to my son mike.”

Patino responded about a minute later with this message.

“I told you I went to punch him on his back again and he moved and I hit him on his stomach.”

The defendant suggested in another text that food was causing the problem but also texted an apology about punching the child.

“My bad. I'm really sorry about dat.”

About 24 hours later, Nieves died at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

Patino’s attorney David Cooper would not comment directly about the content of the messages but insisted there was no intent by Patino.

“If anything happened,” Cooper said. “It was an accident.”

Cranston Police would not comment on the text messages.

The case is set to continue this afternoon on legal matters.

Send your news tips to Walt Buteau at wbuteau@wpri.com and follow Walt on Twitter: @wbuteau