Killer Nurse Read Free

was how she was connected to all the patients.” He told the jury that one of the witnesses had claimed that Saenz injected 20cc of bleach, but that wasn’t true—the witness never said how much bleach was in the syringe. What she’d actually said was that Saenz had used two syringes.
    Deaton reminded the jury of how another witness had changed her testimony. In fact, he told the jury, she had been told how to testify in the trial. He left out how she’d testified that the instructions she’d received had been simply to tell the truth.
    The more Deaton spoke, the redder Herrington’s face got and the madder he became.
    Still Deaton wasn’t done. He told the jury that the doctor overseeing the DaVita clinic hadn’t cared enough about his patients to make them go to the hospital after it was reported that two patients had been injected with bleach. Deaton played his sympathy card—pointing out that his client was a daughter, wife, and the mother of two children. He told the jury about how the police had unfairly snatched Saenz from her trailer home, took her to the police station, and grilled her.
    When Deaton finished, so did Herrington’s calm demeanor. He shot out of his seat like someone had hit his rear with a cattle prod. His first words set the tone for the remainder of his closing: “That has to be the biggest case of misrepresented facts I have ever heard in my life!”
    Indeed, Deaton’s spin had been so egregious that Kristine Bailey, the first alternate on the jury, later said she’d “wanted to stand up and cheer” when Herrington took issue with Deaton’s untruths. She wasn’t alone. Quite a few people who had followed all of the trial agreed with her assessment.
    The more the angered Herrington spoke, the lower Deaton slumped in his seat. This was also noted by the jury. “One thing I noticed when Clyde got up and started talking, I noticed Ryan just kept going farther and farther down in his chair—you know, that kind of stuck,” said jury member Willie Wigley. “Not so much what Clyde was saying, but Ryan’s reaction to it.”
    As Herrington talked, his seething anger turned into raw emotion, and the court saw another side to him, one that had not previously shown itself. It was obvious to all that the DA believed with every fiber of his body that Kimberly Saenz was guilty, and he wanted her to pay for what she’d taken away from the families of the victims. With tears running down his face and his voice trembling, Herrington said something else that stuck with jurors and spectators alike, something that spoke directly to the question of motive. “Why do mothers scald their babies? You don’t need to know what evil is to recognize it.” In other words, even if everyone knew all the reasons why Saenz had killed and injured the patients, they’d never understand them.
    When Herrington finished and sat, emotionally spent, not a single person in the courtroom breathed—not even the judge. Many attempted to choke back their own emotions. It was like a giant vacuum had sucked all the air out of the packed room. Moments passed before the judge was finally able to speak.
    Many who were in the courtroom that day, including other local attorneys who’d shown up just to watch the finish, said that Herrington’s closing was one of the greatest they’d ever heard. Five days later,
The
Lufkin News
, in their “Toast and Roast” editorial, toasted Clyde Herrington “for his impassioned plea to the jury just before it retired to deliberate its verdict.” The article observed that “[y]ou could tell as he choked up that he was determined to get justice for the victims’ families, and not just because it was his last big case as district attorney.”
    The newspaper then “roasted” defense attorney Ryan Deaton for his “in-your-face closing arguments on