TX - Brandy Briggs exonerated in 1999 death of baby Daniel

kayceebee

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This is a tragic situation for this young lady if she is truly innocent.......

July 20, 2004 — Brandy Briggs sits in a Texas prison, serving a 17-year sentence for shaking her 2-month-old son so severely that he later died. But now, a medical examiner says the baby was never shaken at all.


Briggs, from a small town outside Houston, was just 17 years old when her son, Daniel Lemmons, was born. During his short life, Daniel was in and out of hospitals, suffering from kidney problems and urinary tract infections.

On May 2, 1999, Briggs called 911, saying she had gotten up to feed her baby and found him barely breathing in his crib. Daniel was taken to the emergency room at one hospital, where the medical staff made a horrible mistake. They put a breathing tube in his stomach, not his lungs, and pumped air into his stomach for 42 minutes.

Daniel was transferred to another hospital, where the breathing tube mistake was corrected, and he was put on life support. He died in his mother's arms on May 9, 1999 — Mother's Day.

Briggs' nightmare only got worse. A Harris County assistant medical examiner ruled Daniel had died from "shaken baby syndrome," and his young mother was charged with murder.

Four years later, tears come to Briggs' eyes as she remembers what it was like to have her child die in her arms, and then be accused of killing him.

"It is hard, very hard, there are so many nights, I lay in bed and cry," Briggs, now 23, said from the women's prison at Gatesville, Texas. "It is something that will never leave me."

‘He Told Me to Take the Plea’

When Briggs was charged with murder, her family went into debt to pay her attorney's fee, $10,000. Briggs' mother, Shelbia Goss, says she has always known her daughter was innocent. But money was a problem.

"We had no more money, we was losing everything we actually had, we didn't have anything left, all our money was going to fighting for her innocence, and so here she is, in prison, because we don't have any money," Goss said.

Instead of questioning the medical evidence and fighting the case, the attorney told Briggs she should plead guilty to a reduced charge and spend some time on probation.

Continued
1 | 2 | 3 | Next http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/US/imprisoned_mother_040720-1.html
 
Sounds like once again someone was afraid the mom would sue for malpractice, so the turned around and set the police on her. I'm seeing more and more cases that look like that (don't know if they are, they just look like it to me) Someone does something wrong, and to cover their own behind, they accuse the mother/father of something.
 
From September 2006:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Exonerated-mom-facing-all-new-struggles-1485179.php

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Briggs' conviction last December and she was released. The court cited ineffective counsel, saying her lawyer had not thoroughly investigated Daniel's medical records.

Experts who reviewed the records for her appellate attorney, Charles Portz, said a birth defect had caused a bacterial infection in the infant, who had been in and out of hospitals. They also said a breathing tube mistakenly was inserted in Daniel's stomach rather than his lungs at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, depriving his brain of oxygen for at least 30 minutes.
 

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