Today the Travis County District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not seek another death sentence for Cathy Lynn Henderson, who will be retried on charges of capital murder in the death of three-month-old Brandon Baugh in 1994. According to the Austin American-Statesman (“Death penalty ruled out for Henderson,” September 9, 2013), “Henderson was granted a new trial last December by a sharply divided Court of Criminal Appeals, which ruled that scientific advances raised doubts about testimony from prosecution experts about Brandon’s cause of death.” If she is convicted, Henderson faces a sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors have not revealed when they expect her new trial to begin.
Read the full article from the Statesman and TCADP’s post about the court’s decision last year to overturn Henderson’s conviction.
Today’s announcement leaves eight women on death row in Texas. Henderson was just two days away from being executed in 2007 when the Court of Criminal Appeals granted her a stay and ordered an evidentiary hearing.