By Steve Reagan
SDN Staff Writer
A 132nd Judicial District Court jury deliberated for an hour before convicting a Snyder woman of seriously injuring her stepdaughter in June 2015.
The nine-man, three-woman jury convicted Meghan Rebecca Wilson, 22, on a first-degree felony injury to a child charge Wednesday afternoon.
Wilson, who is eligible for probation, faces a potential term of five to 99 years, or life, in prison during the punishment phase of the trial, which began this morning.
The prosecution and defense each called one witness today.
District Attorney Ben Smith called CPS investigator Don Meador, who testified that all of Wilson’s children, including an 11-day-old baby, have been removed from the household and placed with other family members.
He said a service plan had been formulated for Wilson, setting forth several requirements she would have to meet if she was to ever reunite with her children, but that she had not complied with the plan. As a result, Meador said he was recommending the children be permanently removed from the home.
“Aside from attending some psychological counseling, (Wilson) has not cooperated with us on the service plan,” Meador said.
Defense attorney Trey Keith called one witness, Wilson’s mother, Bridget Huerta, during the penalty phase of the trial today. Huerta testified to the effect that her daughter had never been in trouble with the law before or after the offense in question, and it was her belief that Wilson cared for her children deeply.
Both Smith and Keith rested their cases shortly after 9:30 a.m. today.
After attorneys gave closing statements to the jury this morning, deliberations on the sentence began at 11:20 a.m.
On Wednesday, the jury found that Wilson seriously injured her four-year-old stepdaughter by causing blunt-force trauma to her head on June 3, 2015 at the family’s home on 15th Street. The injury was so severe that surgeons at Lubbock’s University Medical Center had to perform an emergency craniotomy to save the girl’s life.
“We’re extremely pleased with the jury’s verdict,” Smith said. “We started putting this case together a long time ago to get justice for that little girl, and the jury’s verdict has taken a big step in that direction.”
During closing arguments Wednesday, both attorneys made their cases before the jury.
Keith urged the jury to look beyond the highly emotional nature of the young girl’s injuries when rendering a verdict.
“This is a heart-rending case. You look at the photos of this beautiful child — I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ugly one — and you see the bruises on her back, the bruises on her thigh and the scar on her head, and it is very easy to think of this trial as all about getting justice for this small child,” Keith said. “But you also ask yourself: Did the state prove the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Meghan caused these injuries?”
Earlier in the day, Keith introduced evidence, in the form of testimony from the child’s foster mother and a video of an interview with the child, in which the child had indicated that her father, Pedro Alvarez, had injured her in the past, and he raised the possibility of the father being the perpetrator during his summation to the jury.
“Who did this? We still don’t have a good explanation for that,” Keith said. “The video is powerful and it’s compelling. It can be argued that, because she doesn’t remember what happened (on June 3, 2015), she’s an unreliable witness, but, gosh darn it, it is so powerful: ‘Did anybody hurt you? Dad. Did anybody else hurt you? Dad.’”
Even if jurors believed Wilson was the person who caused the injuries, Keith argued that Smith hadn’t proved she intentionally or knowingly caused the injuries, as alleged in the indictment.
“We’re not arguing that (the child’s) injuries weren’t serious. We’re not arguing any of those elements,” Keith said. “We’re arguing whether Meghan intentionally or knowingly caused those serious bodily injuries. We feel bad for (the child), but the evidence just does not support the charge in the indictment.”
In response, Smith said there was no doubt that Wilson was the one who caused the injuries and that she did so intentionally and knowingly.
“This case is not as complicated and the proof is not as convoluted as Mr. Keith wants you to believe,” Smith said. “There’s only one logical conclusion you can draw about what happened, and that is the conclusion that the defendant caused those injuries to that child. It’s the only logical conclusion.”
Smith said there were two major reasons to support such a conclusion.
“First, there was the severity of the injuries,” he said. “This was not something caused by simply slapping the child, they were of the force you’d see in a fall from two or three stories high. This was a very violent force.”
Smith also pointed to inconsistentcies in Wilson’s statements to authorities after the incident. Wilson stated the child had a seizure after playing and collapsed, a version that was heavily refuted by medical testimony earlier in the day.
“What she said was a damned lie,” Smith said. “And why do people lie? Because they have a guilty conscience. That shows intent. She also lied (in October 2014, when the child also suffered serious injuries) and that also shows intent. She got away with her lie in October, so she thought she could get away with it in June, and that also shows intent.”
In response to the suggestion that the child’s father may have caused the injuries, Smith had a simple response.
“She was the only adult in the house at the time the child was injured,” he said. “This isn’t an either-or situation. It’s possible Pedro caused an injury to the child at some point in the past, but logic dictates that the only person who could have caused those injuries on June 3, 2015 was the defendant.”