A judge has ruled that placing convicted baby killer Genene Jones on trial for five murders that allegedly happened nearly forty years ago does not violate her Constitutional right to a speedy trial, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood says he is ready 'next week' to place Jones on trial for the murders of five babies in San Antonio back in the early 1980s, and is prepared regardless of whether or not Jones attempts to mount an insanity defense,
A prosecutor told a hearing that Jones told a cellmate at the State Prison for Women in Gatesville in 1998 that 'the voices in her head' made her inject infants with lethal amounts of drugs.
"I would be speculating like anybody else, but her attorneys are doing what they are obligated to do for her," LaHood said. "This is not something we are used to dealing with."
LaHood has made it a priority of his term as District Attorney to make sure Jones, now 67, never again walks free.
Jones was convicted in 1984 of killing Chelsea McClellan, a 14 month old girl, while she was working as a pediatric nurse at a doctor's office in Kerrville, by injecting the little girl with a lethal amount of a sedative.
Jones was sentenced to life in prison, but she was released earlier this year, after serving 33 years in prison, under 'mandatory release' laws that were in place at the time in order to reduce prison overcrowding.
But on the day she was released, a Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy was waiting in front of the prison to transport her to the Bexar County Jail, to stand trial for killing five children and toddlers while she was a pediatric nurse at what was then called Bexar County Hospital, now University Hospital, in the years before the Kerrville case.
It has been estimated that Jones may have murdered as many as sixty children.
"So I am confident that we are going the right thing," LaHood said. "I'm confident we have the evidence to go forward, and I am confident that a jury will consider this case and come back with what is right."
There was speculation at Jones' 1984 trial that she has a condition known as 'Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.' That is when a person intentionally harms another person, usually a child, so the person can either be seen as the 'heroic figure' who comes in a saves the life of the child, or the 'understanding shoulder to cry on' who is there to comfort the family when the child dies.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is not considered a mental illness, and is not a defense to murder.