Have you heard of Hannah Overton? She’s spent the last seven years serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for the murder of her four-year-old, then-soon-to-be-adopted son. But this September, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is that state’s supreme court for criminal cases, reversed her conviction and sent it back to the office of the district attorney that prosecuted her. At the original trial, the prosecutor argued that Ms. Overton tortured and killed the boy by force-feeding him salt because she couldn’t cope with his behavior. Apparently, the jury didn’t buy that, but it did convict her on an alternative theory of murder “by omission” on the ground that she did not get him medical attention quickly enough when he fell ill.
The case has created quite a stir, and you can find some local, national, and international coverage of it here, here, here, here, and here.
Ms. Overton has maintained her innocence all along, and after her conviction was reversed, she and her defenders hoped that prosecutors would not re-file the case, but they had no such luck. A couple weeks ago, the district attorney announced that his office would retry her on the original capital-murder charge.
In the meantime, family members say they have faith she will finally come home soon. One of them, Lucy Frost, wrote an open letter recently to the Journal of the American Bar Association, and the text of her letter follows below:
“Regarding ‘The Age of Innocents,’ September, page 54: I have a family member, Hannah Overton, serving life without parole for a crime that I and others know did not occur. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the capital conviction on Sept. 17. Now we await decisions on bail and retrial.
All the post-conviction hearings and appeals in her case suggest prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct and a tunnel-vision investigation, as well as a medical examiner who appears to me to have been squarely on the prosecution team.
I use the qualifiers “suggest” and “appears to me” because she is legally not yet exonerated. I am 100 percent certain she is innocent. This was a tragic, accidental death of a child—not capital murder.
To say that I have lost faith in our criminal justice system would be an understatement. As a citizen, I pray it can be reformed. Because of Hannah’s case, I have come to know and believe many things, including:
- A national innocence board is needed—similar to the National Traffic Safety Board—a federal agency that independently investigates every exoneration and wrongful conviction, then trains and advises all parties on how to avoid the errors that led to them.
- The death penalty should be abolished. The system is too vulnerable to errors. I have no doubt that innocent people have been executed in this country.
- Prosecutors must be better trained, and there must be oversight of this role. There appear to be no checks and balances on them. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
- An innocent person must get the advice of an attorney immediately, even when they believe there has been no crime committed and they know they are innocent. The authorities are not going to figure out what happened. Sad but true is the fact that innocence is no protection.”
