Bullet Point Case Fact Sheet
In late 2014, the deceased admitted to police investigators to molesting his 3 month old daughter. 19 months later the District Attorney dropped the charges on the eve of the case going to trial due to "the case not being as strong as originally thought". It is unclear what could not be as strong as an admission of guilt such as is present in this case.
In the days immediately following the admission of guilt by the deceased, the accused filed for divorce, which resulted in a contentious 6.5 year divorce/custody battle. Despite the case going through jurisdictional, statute of limitation, and continued aggravating circumstances the deceased was awarded full custody (for the first time ever) even though the accused had been awarded an order to move out of state to be nearer to family.
During the time period of the divorce/custody battle the deceased engaged in a pattern of harassing and threatening behavior that impacted the accused's ability to work, attend school, or live in peace and harmony. Numerous police reports that were filed to seek assistance from authorities were ignored because they were not determined to be "life threatening" or with sufficient property damage/theft to be of import. The state of California's decisions at each point, after the fact, gave the false impression to authorities in Texas that said allegations were somewhere between "frivolous" to "non-existent" when in fact, especially in the case of the sexual abuse charge in 2014, were certainly such that warranted action.
During two years of court mandated unsupervised visitation in Texas, which the deceased attended a total of 5 times, the minor child reported further inappropriate behavior.
Each time the accused appealed to the justice system for assistance and relief she was denied. She accumulated exhorbitant legal fees in family court, coupled with a system that refused to help at every step: Whether it was prosecuting an admittant child molester, investigating a pattern of harassing and stalking behavior, enforcing court orders and actions that were allowed to go ignored, up to and including the way her trial and appeal have been handled all exhibit a system that has failed the accused and her family in a multitude of ways.
In the legal defense following the unfortunate events of July 25, 2020 in Little Elm, Texas, the accused was disallowed to use the most pertinent information from the cases in California to develop her defense. A great deal of the background information detailed above centered around a few specific facts, primary among that being the event that took place in November 2014. The disadvantage of not having the vital facts to explain a Defense-of-Third-Party defense hampered the defense, and below standard representation at this stage of the defense included the failure to properly subpoena the California police officer who signed the December 9, 2014 police report that described the interrogation where the deceased admitted to the events that took place November 30 of that same year.
Additional failures in representation during the initial trial included a many months gap in communication between the court appointed lawyer and the accused or her family. Failure to call vital witnesses who could have contributed to helping establish the state of mind of the accused. The failure to address a diagnosed psychiatric diagnosis (Pre-Menstral Dysphoria Syndrome).
The jury received an incorrect instruction during the punishment phase of the trial that may have contributed to the accused receiving a much harsher sentence than what may have otherwise been imposed by the jury if properly instructed.
A motion for Retrial was prepared by a second court-appointed lawyer and contained a very well-detailed synopsis of the mitigating factors that hindered the defense in the original trial. This same lawyer failed to address almost any of these issues in the appeal that was ultimately decided on September 7, 2023. All four of the main issues raised by the defense in the appeal were refused for consideration by the State, with the first two centered specifically on the inability to craft a cohesive defense when a tremendous amount of the mitigating factors have been disallowed or flippantly dismissed out of hand.
