Davita nurse found guilty for murder

UPDATE (March 30,2012 5:25 P.M. CST) - LUFKIN (KYTX) -- Kimberly Saenz, the former DaVita nurse on trial for poisoning dialysis patients with bleach, has been found guilty of capital murder and three counts of aggravated assault.

Sentencing will take place this Monday. Stay tuned to CBS 19 for updates.

UPDATE (March 30, 2012) - The jury in the case of a former Lufkin dialysis nurse accused of injecting bleach into her patients deliberate for a second day.

CBS 19's Field Sutton will bring the latest updates tonight 5 and 6.

UPDATE (2:09 p.m.) - A jury is now deliberating the case of a former dialysis nurse accused of injecting bleach into the bloodstream's of five patients resulting in their deaths .

UPDATE (March 29, 2012 11:44 AM CST) - LUFKIN (KYTX) -- T. Ryan Deaton, defense attorney in the capital murder trial of Kimberly Saenz, made his closing argument before the grand jury.

"Today you have the opportunity to save a woman. To be a hero. Save her from big government and big business. You have the opportunity to decide who the victim really is," said Deaton.

Deaton repeatedly referred to Saenz as a "Lufkin girl" and a "regular person."

He questioned what possible motive Saenz could have had for poisoning these five patients, concluding that she had nothing to gain.

Deaton put forward that the only individuals who stood to gain from this case were the higher-up's at DaVita, and he suggested that motive was money--money and covering up a case of gross corporate negligence.

Deaton argued that the prosecution's case rests entirely upon speculation, that there is "no smoking gun," and that extrapolation and "reverse engineering of testimony" are the only way to conclude that Saenz had anything to do with the deaths.

"If you use your reasonable thinking mind, you know nothing happened on April 28, 2008," Deaton told the jury.

He then recapped the autopsy results for the victims, emphasizing that none of the alleged victims showed signs of hemolysis (when red blood cells rupture, releasing hemoglobin into the bloodstream--a sign of extremely elevated potassium levels), which should have occurred if the patients had been injected with large quantities of bleach.

He also pointed out that patients became sick hours apart, but eye-witness accounts hold that all injections occurred within a very short time period.

Deaton stated that, essentially, the only wrongdoing of which Saenz was guilty was showing up to work April 28.

He argued that the sharps containers were tampered with before police received them, citing the fact that DaVita contacted both their lawyer and the CDC before calling police about the deaths.

Deaton stated that the high concentrations of bleach in bloodlines surrendered to the police got there after the machines were turned off and that there was more-than-ample time for the evidence to be tampered with before being handed-over.

UPDATE (March 29, 2012 10:35 AM CST) - LUFKIN (KYTX) -- District Attorney Clyde Herrington presented his closing argument this morning in the capital murder trial of Kimberly Saenz, a former DaVita nurse accused of injecting dialysis lines with bleach.

Herrington argued that Saenz's testimony before the Grand Jury was inconsistent with what she told police.

In the initial interview, Saenz stated that she used cups to mix bleach and that she had never brought a syringe near Marva Rhone, one the victims for whose murder Saenz is on trial.

However, Saenz testified in court that she had been instructed to mix the bleach solution with syringes and that she had administered saline solution to Marva Rhone, using a syringe.

The prosecution argues that Saenz has simply adapted her story to work around the body of evidence against her.

Harrington closed by stating "I submit that the evidence is compelling and overwhelming that she killed each and every one of those five people but you only have to agree that she killed two. Any two. And then you are instructed to find her guilty of capital murder."

UPDATE (March 28, 2012) - The capital murder trial of a former Lufkin nurse accused of injecting dialysis patients with bleach is on hold today.

Closing arguments begin at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

The jury will deliberate following the closing statements.

UPDATE (March 22, 2012) - LUFKIN (KYTX) -- The prosecution has rested and the defense called several witnesses in the capital murder trial of a former Lufkin Nurse accused of injecting dialysis patients with bleach.

The day began with testimony from another former nurse from Lufkin's DaVita Dialysis Clinic, Connie Baker, who worked there during the spring of 2008, when 38-year-old Kimberly Saenz is accused of having done the bleach injections.

Baker testified that a supervisor at DaVita called a staff meeting shortly after the clinic shut down due to patient deaths and injuries. She said that supervisor vowed in the meeting that she would "not go down for this."

The next witness was Engineering consultant Peter Cartwright who was brought in to examine water testing records maintained by employees at DaVita.

Cartwright testified that the records were un-trustworthy because they were improperly dated and indicated that employees had taken shortcuts by not allowing water to run through the on-site treatment system for at least fifteen minutes prior to testing it for chlorine. He said the clinic could not reliably prove that the water was suitable for dialysis.

On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Layne Thompson attacked Cartwright's conclusion based on the redundant tests DaVita was allegedly doing on the water daily.

"They were using Calorometric testing kits in the water treatment area and bleach testing strips for the water coming out of the dialysis machines," Thompson said. "So there were two water testing modalities in place and they both came up negative."

"There seems to be a total lack of documentation and training which I would say is necessary for the operation of a hemodialysis clinic," Cartwright countered.

The next witness was Dr. Jonathan Neidigh, a biochemistry professor from Loma Linda University in California. He testified as a corroborative witness who had examined another scientist's tests of dialysis bloodlines belonging to Saenz's alleged victims.

Bloodlines are the collection of tuning that carry blood to and from the dialysis machine. Neidigh's point was essentially that bleach was injected into the bloodlines while the dialysis machines were off.

"When we're looking at the bloodlines, the expectation is that if there was an injection while the machine was running, we expect to see a uniform distribution of what was injected," Neidigh said. " If the machine was off, whatever was injected will stay in the area it was injected into."

The defense infers from his testimony that someone tried to frame Saenz by tainting the bloodlines after the fact.

"When looking at those lines...there is nothing in the data that is consistent with bleach being placed into loving fluid that's going into the patient," Neidigh said.

UPDATE (2:35 p.m.) - Linda Hall, 57, a dialysis patient at DaVita who was attended to by Kimberly Saenz, testified to seeing Saenz inject one of her alleged victims.

"Something just made me look at her, Hall said. She was standing at the counter all fidgety-like. She went in a drawer, she took a syringe out of it and stuck it in her pocket. She looked side to side, went to the bleach container and set it on the floor. She stuck the syringe in the bleach solution, she went to [Ms. Rohn's] port hole and stuck it in there."

LUFKIN (KYTX) -- Defense Attorney, Ryan Deaton, made his opening argument in the trial of Kimberly Saenz, the DaVita nurse accused of killing five patients by injecting bleach into their dialysis lines.

"The only people in this case with any motive are DaVita, and not Kimberly Saenz," said Deaton.

Deaton claims that Saenz has become the scapegoat for DaVita's negligence.

The defense states that the company brought in higher ranking individuals to monitor the clinic after patients began getting sick. The employees were then allegedly told that they were mixing the bleach and water solution, used to clean equipment, incorrectly.

According to the defense, employees were told that they were to mix exactly ten CC's of bleach per liter of water. Allegedly, An employee suggested during one of these meetings that they use syringes to make the measurements of bleach, and, according to the defense, this is precisely what Saenz.

Deaton states that the clinic was not properly treating water used during dialysis to remove chlorine. This failure to remove excess bleach, Deaton states, is what led to a test that showed levels of chlorine 15 times the legal limit in the dialysis lines, five days after Saenz was charged.

The defense claims that toxic levels of chlorine accumulated gradually in the patient's blood, rather than a large injection delivered by Saenz as the prosecution claims. Deaton states that the results yield by analysis of the patients' blood was inconsistent with acute bleach poisoning. Instead, Deaton asserts that DaVita essentially staged a cover up and tampered with evidence before handing it over to the police.

"DaVita has manipulated the evidence, the police and the science in this case," said Deaton.

LUFKIN (KYTX) -- Thus far, District Attorney Clyde Herrington has made his opening argument in the murder trial of Kimberly Saenz, a Lufkin nurse accused of killing five patients by injecting bleach into their dialysis lines.

All of these deaths occurred in April 2008, and during the course of his argument, Herrington revealed evidence recovered from a seized computer belonging to Saenz.

Investigators recovered search history from April , relating to "bleach blood poisoning," and on March 5, Saenz allegedly searched "can bleach be detected in dialysis lines."

Investigate also seized blood lines retained by the dialysis clinic that had been used on patients who later died or were injured. They say those blood lines tested positive for bleach.

CBS 19's Field Sutton brings you the latest developments in the trial, tonight at 6.

LUFKIN (KYTX) - Former employee of Lufkin DaVita accused of injecting patients with bleach trial begins Monday.

The jury selection of twelve jurors and 3 alternates in the capital murder trial for Kimberly Clark Saenz, 38, of Pollok began at 9 a.m.

Saenz is charged with 5 counts of aggravated assault and capital murder.

In 2008, Saenz is accused of injecting patients with bleach while they were receiving their treatments at the DaVita Lufkin Dialysis Center. Five people died and five were severely injured.

The Angelina County's office is requesting the death penalty for Saenz.

This information will be updated throughout the day and tonight during CBS 19's 5, 6, and 10 p.m. newscasts.