A woman who spent nearly two decades on Texas death row for killing an infant has died in prison, less than two months after she pleaded guilty to murder ahead of a new trial.
Cathy Lynn Henderson, 58, died Sunday at University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, Travis County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Lisa Block said.
Henderson's attorney, Jon Evans, told the Austin American-Statesman she was hospitalized for breathing difficulties about two weeks after accepting a plea deal June 12 where she avoided a retrial and took a 25-year prison sentence. She was being treated for pneumonia and then a stroke, Evans said.
Travis County prosecutors decided not to pursue a death sentence at a trial that had been set for September, but she could have received a life term if convicted. Under the June plea agreement, credit for time she already served meant she could have been released in four years.
Henderson was just days away from execution in 2007 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted her punishment for the 1994 death of Brandon Baugh, a 3-month-old child she was baby-sitting. The same court subsequently granted her a new trial.
Henderson had insisted she dropped the child while caring for him at her Pflugerville home.
Henderson said she performed CPR but didn't call 911, panicked and fled. She wrapped him in his blanket, stuffed him in a wine cooler box and traveled north, burying him in a field 60 miles away. Then she drove to her native Missouri where she was later arrested.
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At her trial, then medical examiner Roberto Bayardo testified it was "impossible" to attribute Brandon's head injury to an accidental fall.
But Bayardo recanted his testimony in 2007, saying advances in the understanding of pediatric head injuries found that relatively short falls onto a hard surface could produce injuries similar to those he discovered during Brandon's 1994 autopsy. Bayardo concluded he could not determine if the boy's injuries were the result of "an intentional act or an accidental fall."
Henderson had been moved from state prison to custody of Travis County authorities in January 2013 and was at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle when she became ill.
Block said while there's no evidence of foul play in Henderson's death, an autopsy was planned.
