CNN
—
A Texas lady convicted of killing a pregnant lady after which taking her unborn child, who additionally died, has been sentenced to demise, court docket data present.
A Bowie County jury final month after about an hour of deliberations discovered Taylor Rene Parker responsible of capital homicide within the deaths of Reagan Michelle Simmons and her child, the district lawyer’s workplace beforehand mentioned. The identical jury was then tasked with selecting her sentence – demise or jail with out parole.
The jury handed down the demise sentence Wednesday, on-line court docket data present.
“Primarily based on the robust protection case we placed on at sentencing, we’re dissatisfied within the verdict, however we respect the jury’s findings after an extended, factually and emotionally tough trial,” Parker’s lawyer, Jeff Harrelson, mentioned.
Along with her demise sentence, Parker turns into one among simply seven ladies on Texas’ demise row, in keeping with statistics from the Texas Division of Legal Justice.
In line with a possible trigger affidavit, Parker had advised her boyfriend and others she was pregnant, held a gender reveal occasion and on October 9, 2020, mentioned she was going to a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, to preregister for labor to be induced.
That very same morning, police in New Boston, Texas, west of Texarkana, obtained a 911 name from a girl who reported somebody had killed her daughter, the affidavit mentioned. Responding officers discovered Simmons, who they discovered had been 34 weeks pregnant, with a big reduce alongside her stomach and the child not in her womb.
Texas state troopers performed a visitors cease of a automobile that morning and located Parker holding a child in her lap and “the umbilical twine was linked to the toddler, which seemed to be popping out of the feminine’s pants, as if she gave beginning to the kid,” the affidavit mentioned.
Parker and the child had been taken to the hospital in Idabel, the place hospital workers decided Parker had not given beginning to the kid. Parker then admitted to being in a “bodily altercation” with the sufferer and abducting the unborn child from the sufferer’s physique.
Authorities decided Parker brought about the deaths of each Simmons and her child “as a result of incapacity to supply vital care to the kid,” the affidavit mentioned.
“We’re simply so grateful justice has been served at this time, for not solely our household, our associates, the prosecution group, our neighborhood,” Jessica Brooks, the mom of the sufferer, advised CNN affiliate KSLA, which reported the sentencing trial lasted 25 days and included 142 witnesses.
In line with the station, prosecutors argued for demise, saying Parker wouldn’t change, whereas the protection, in searching for the present jurors with context from Parker’s life, mentioned she had traumatic points that had not been addressed.
“I’m overwhelmed with happiness it’s over,” the sufferer’s sister Emily Simmons mentioned, per KSLA, “as a result of (Parker) has been such a burden in our life for therefore lengthy now that I haven’t been in a position to consider my sister with out eager about her.”
