No. 08-02-00144-CR
August 18, 2005. DO NOT PUBLISH.
Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 5 of Dallas County, Texas (Tc# F-0175501-Pl).
Before BARAJAS, C.J., McCLURE, and CHEW, JJ.
ANN CRAWFORD McCLURE, Justice.
Ruth Ann Martin appeals her conviction for injury to a child. This case involves the tragic death of Appellant's daughter, Heather. Appellant waived her right to a jury trial and entered an open plea of guilty to a two paragraph indictment which charged Appellant with recklessly causing serious bodily injury to her daughter. The trial court found Appellant guilty and assessed her punishment at a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment for a term of twenty years. In her appeal to this court, Appellant raised three issues: (1) the trial court erred by failing to reject her guilty plea because the evidence adduced at the hearing negates the culpable mental state; (2) the indictment was fundamentally defective; and (3) ineffective assistance of counsel. Finding that the trial court abused its discretion in accepting the guilty plea when evidence inconsistent with guilt had been introduced, a divided panel of the court sustained the first issue. Upon the State's petition for discretionary review, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and remanded the case to us for consideration of Appellant's other two points of error.
FACTUAL SUMMARY
Appellant, who characterized herself as a recovering drug addict, had been on felony community supervision since 1993 for three delivery of a controlled substance offenses and possession of a controlled substance. Despite it being a violation of the terms and conditions of her community supervision, Appellant knowingly possessed a bottle of morphine which she stored in "a regular aspirin bottle" in the medicine cabinet of her home. She did not recall whether the bottle had a childproof cap; she believed it was a "push and turn" type. Appellant's mother-in-law had taken morphine prior to her death from cancer. A relative gave the morphine to Appellant's husband, Raymond Martin, and asked him to sell it to raise money to pay for the funeral expenses. Mr. Martin had been unable to sell any of the morphine pills but they had not disposed of the drug nor returned it to the relative. Appellant knew the drug was dangerous because she and a friend had become ill after ingesting one of the morphine tablets from the same bottle. On May 3, 2001, Appellant and her husband went to a sports bar to watch a Dallas Mavericks basketball game. Although their five-year-old child was taken to a babysitter, Appellant left her pre-teen daughter, Heather, and twelve-year-old son, Michael, alone at home. Appellant knew that Heather had a headache and apparently, migraine headaches were common in her family. When the parents returned home four hours later, they found Heather asleep in their bed. Heather whimpered when Appellant told her that she needed to move to her own bed. The child walked into a door jamb and told Appellant that she could not "walk right." Appellant held on to her daughter and walked her to her room. When Heather got into her bed, she shielded her eyes from the light and covered her head. In a written statement, Appellant said that Heather had cried and vomited all night.