LUFKIN, Texas — A jury heard evidence Monday to decide if an East Texas nurse goes to death row or spends the rest of her life in prison for killing five kidney dialysis patients by injecting them with bleach.
Kimberly Saenz, 38, sobbed quietly 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.
She was convicted Friday of killing the patients and deliberately injuring five others at a clinic run by Denver-based health care giant DaVita Inc.
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 having no chance to get out.
"Come out in a box?" attorney Steve Taylor asked Frank AuBuchon, a retired Texas prison official.
"Yes, sir," he replied as Saenz looked down at the defense table, her head in her right hand.
Photos of the victims were among the evidence introduced by Angelina County District Attorney Clyde Herrington, who called only three witnesses Monday.
All 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 Lufin Davita clinic.
Taylor brought out in questioning that Saenz and her husband had reconciled.
Other records showed she had been fired from her job as a Lufkin hospital nurse after drugs showed up missing and were found in her purse. Her nursing license eventually was suspended. And prosecutors showed records 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.
Death row only was mentioned in a few brief references during all of Monday's questioning and testimony.
Vernon Warren, whose home was the scene of the domestic disturbance calls to police, said Saenz remained welcome there. Warren said he was dating Saenz's mother-in-law at the time of the incidents.
Scott Bailey, her daughter's softball coach, said she attended baseball practices and "never had any concerns at all" about her presence around his daughter and other girls on the team.
Saenz was fired in April 2008 after a rash of illnesses and deaths at the clinic in Lufkin, 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.
Saenz would be the 10th woman among about 300 prisoners on Texas death row if jurors decide she should be put to death. Since the Civil War, three women have been executed in Texas, all since 1998.