Case of Texas woman on death row over grisly murder back in spotlight | Texas

In an America filled with often brutal crime stories, it takes special circumstances to truly feel the shock.

But the story of Taylor Parker, who is currently on death row in Texas after being convicted in 2020 of murdering her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock and cutting her unborn daughter Braxlynn from her womb, is terrifying in part because it seems almost unnatural.

Such a terrible act is also rare. From 1987 to 2011, the number of cases of fetal abduction through removal of the mother’s internal organs was only 15 in the United States and probably 100 worldwide. None were recorded in the United States until 1973.

Parker’s case is currently getting Netflix’s documentary treatment Maternal InstinctIt will be published next week. Parker was 29 when she attacked and killed her friend and took her baby. Parker was arrested almost immediately, with the mother’s blood on her hands and the dead baby in her arms, and admitted that she had gone to an Oklahoma hospital to check it out, as any newborn mother might do.

At trial, Parker’s defense did not attempt to prove that its client did not do this. Instead, his lawyers wanted to keep him off the death penalty.

Had Parker been convicted of kidnapping, he would have faced up to 10 years in prison. If found guilty of murder, he faces a sentence of 99 years or life in prison. But if convicted of both, he faces life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection.

Prosecutors argued that Parker’s crime was carefully planned and that she planned for months to find a real baby she could claim as her own.

A neurologist who testified for the defense described Parker’s condition as “frontal lobe syndrome” and said “something was very wrong with his brain.” explains A complex network of cognitive, behavioral, emotional and motivational disorders.

Parker was convicted of capital murder in October 2022. He was sentenced to death a month later.

On appeal, attorneys argued that Parker should not be charged with capital murder because the baby may not have been alive when it was cut from the mother’s womb, so the aggravated kidnapping charge was moot because you cannot kidnap an unborn person. They also argued that Parker did not receive a fair trial due to extensive media coverage and comments on social media during the sentencing phase.

Parker, 34, is only one of seven women sentenced to death row in Texas. Texas criminal justice department. His crime, conviction and sentence were upheld by the Texas criminal appeals court, and last month the US supreme court said it would not review his case on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial. An execution date has not been scheduled.

According to the story, Parker tricked her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, a roofer who worked side jobs such as welding and hog hunting, into believing she was pregnant. They even held a gender reveal party.

They met at a rodeo in 2019. Parker said he became an heir to the Blackburn syrup fortune while trying to buy a $4.7 million property, but had only ever worked at a staffing agency and an Obstetrics Clinic.

Griffin later told the court their relationship had been an “emotional roller coaster” and that he had found a way to her heart. When he came home from work, he would prepare dinner. She helped care for the animals and ran the household. He promised him that he would deed 800 acres of land.

Parker told Griffin she was “pretty much pregnant” and began collecting baby clothes and baby care supplies. But Griffin didn’t know that Parker, who already has two children, had a hysterectomy in 2019. Prosecutors alleged she faked the pregnancy and committed the crime to keep her boyfriend.

Investigators testified at trial that Parker watched numerous videos of giving birth and caring for babies. The plan and its rapid resolution came together on October 9, 2020.

Parker went to the home of her friend, Simmons-Hancock, whom she had met and befriended while taking engagement and wedding photos. Simmons-Hancock was seven and a half months pregnant. Parker cut or stabbed Simmons-Hancock about 100 times and removed her baby using a scalpel. The victim’s three-year-old daughter, Kynlee, was found unharmed under the blankets in her bed.

Parker fled the scene with her baby, but was pulled over by a state trooper for erratic driving. The soldier found her covered in dried blood while holding the dead baby with the umbilical cord still attached.

Parker claimed to have given birth on the side of the road, but medical staff at a nearby hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, later found no signs of new labor. During questioning, Parker admitted to having a “physical altercation” with Simmons-Hancock and removing the baby from her friend’s body.

“There’s a phenomenon called elimination homicide, where you don’t hold any resentment toward the person, but that person is standing in the way of something you want,” says Boston College forensic psychologist Gary Brucato, co-author of The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime.

Fetal abduction is rare but not unheard of. This is also a contemporary phenomenon. “What you find is a person trying to assert the predictability of a relationship where they feel like they can’t live without their partner,” says Brucato. “Their thought is, if they’re going to be prey for this person [they] “I can only have one child.”

But this event also disrupts many traditions regarding maternal care. In 2021, Lisa Montgomery was executed for attacking and killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Missouri in 2004 and stealing her unborn baby. The baby survived, and Montgomery became the first female prisoner executed by the US government since 1953.

Montgomery was known to have endured an extremely abusive upbringing and had been diagnosed with serious mental illness. “Women who commit such crimes are likely to become victims themselves.” Read a petition for amnesty. “These are important factors that make death sentences unwarranted.”

One reason Parker faces the death penalty is because Texas criminal law considers a fetus a “person” at any stage of pregnancy. Parker’s lawyers argued that the baby was stillborn and therefore could not have been a kidnapping victim.

“In our view, the evidence at trial clearly demonstrated that the baby was tragically not born alive and therefore could not legally have been the victim or target of a kidnapping,” said Caitlin Halpern, who handled Parker’s appeal.

Appellate attorneys argued that prosecutors portrayed Parker as a “sexual deviant” and a “terrible mother” because of public sentiment in Bowie County, where the crime and trial took place and where a change of venue request was denied.

Based on testimony from a flight paramedic and a doctor, Texas appellate judges ruled that “a reasonable juror would find beyond a reasonable doubt that Braxlynn was born alive when Parker abducted her.” However, Parker is the only witness who knows for sure whether Braxlynn is alive or not.

According to Halpern, Parker’s crime was “so violent, distressing, and unusual that it blinded people to technical and legal arguments and perhaps made people less receptive to what a fair trial would be.”

Halpern acknowledges that the rarity and brutality of the crime makes it difficult to empathize. “But the system doesn’t require empathy. It requires compliance with the law, and we think that’s not really happening here.”