Ex-nurse in five bleach deaths gets life in prison (more info)

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Ex-nurse in five bleach deaths gets life in prison
Posted: April 3, 2012 - 12:01am


JOEL ANDREWS
photo - In a Friday, March 30, 2012 file photo, Carla Mott, daughter of murder victim Cora Bryant, hugs her nephew Torrance Agnew after verdicts were read in the murder trial of Kimberly Saenz at the Angelina County Courthouse, in Lufkin, Texas. Saenz, a former nurse accused of killing five of her patients and injuring five others by injecting bleach into their kidney dialysis tubing, was found guilty of capital murder. Jurors who convicted Saenz began hearing evidence Monday, April 2, 2012 to decide whether she receives life in prison without the chance of parole or lethal injection. (AP Photo/The Lufkin Daily News, Joel Andrews, File) MANDATORY CREDIT; TV OUT
By Michael Graczyk 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LUFKIN — A former Texas nurse convicted of killing five dialysis patients by injecting them with bleach should spend the rest of her life in prison with no chance of parole, jurors who earlier convicted the woman of capital murder said Monday.

Kimberly Saenz was convicted Friday of killing the patients at a clinic run by Denver-based health care giant DaVita Inc. She also received three 20-year terms for aggravated assault in the cases of five other patients who were deliberately injured.

Jurors deliberated about 45 minutes before returning with their decision on the punishment. They also could have recommended that Saenz receive the death penalty.

Saenz was fired in April 2008 after a rash of illnesses and deaths at the clinic in Lufkin, in East Texas about 125 miles northeast of Houston. Her lawyers argued Saenz wrongly took the blame for the clinic’s sloppy procedures.

Bleach is a commonly used disinfectant at the clinic.

“She’s never getting out no matter what you do,” Saenz’s lawyer, Steve Taylor, said in his closing remarks, urging jurors to choose a life sentence. “Society is protected. You will never see her again.”

Prosecutors failed to show she would present a future danger for violence, one of the questions they must answer in deciding a death penalty, Taylor said. He reminded them she’d been free since her arrest and indictment during the trial.

“Kimberly Saenz has been out of jail for the last one, two, three, four years,” Taylor said. “You’ve passed her on the stairs. ... If there was any possibility to create a future criminal act, the state would have her butt in jail. In the last four years, she has behaved herself.”

Angelina County District Attorney Clyde Herrington never specifically urged jurors to impose the death penalty but pointed out how Saenz was found with drugs stolen while she was working as a hospital nurse and tried to fake a urine test that was required of her.

“I know you’ll reach a verdict that’s just and in accordance with the law,” he said after showing the jury photos of some of the victims on a large screen in the courtroom.

“The victims in this case were patients that went in for medical treatment to try to prolong their lives and the only thing they did wrong was trust the defendant,” he said. “And they are innocent victims.”

Saenz had sobbed quietly earlier Monday as one witness called by her lawyer talked about how devastating the case has been to Saenz’s fifth-grade daughter, one of her two children. The witness was among a dozen who testified Monday, nine of them for Saenz.

Most of the defense witnesses attested to Saenz’s participation in her two children’s school work and athletics, how she attended church and was a good worker at a previous job. All were questioned briefly except for the final witness, a prison consultant who described Saenz’s restrictions as an inmate serving life without parole and emphasized that she would have no chance to get out.

“Come out in a box?” Taylor, the defense attorney, asked consultant Frank AuBuchon, who’s a retired Texas prison official.

“Yes, sir,” AuBuchon replied as Saenz looked down at the defense table, her head in her right hand.

Death row only was mentioned in a few brief references during all of Monday’s questioning and testimony.

All the prosecution witnesses were Lufkin law enforcement officers who told of arresting Saenz for public intoxication and of citing her for criminal trespass, both related to domestic disturbances with her husband. Records introduced also showed her husband had filed for divorce and obtained an emergency protective order against her in June 2007, a year before the outbreak of death and illnesses at the Lufkin Davita clinic.

Taylor brought out in questioning that Saenz and her husband had reconciled.

Other records showed Saenz had been fired from her job as a Lufkin hospital nurse after the drugs showed up missing and were found in her purse. Her nursing license eventually was suspended. And prosecutors showed records that she had submitted false information on a job application in 2009, indicating she worked at a roofing company during the years when she was a nurse.

http://lubbockonline.com/texas/2012-04-03/ex-nurse-five-bleach-deaths-gets-life-prison#.T3qdCb-3DII