Charges dismissed against Saginaw mother accused of killing 2-month-old baby in 2015
The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office on Thursday dropped a capital murder charge against a Saginaw mother who was accused in the death of her 2-month-old daughter in 2015.
Madelynn Sanchez died March 16, 2015, from blunt trauma to the head, former Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani reported. The 2-month-old was found face down on a pillow and unresponsive in a baby bed, according to court records. Her death was ruled a homicide after the baby’s body was also observed to have broken ribs and bruises.
Madelynn’s mother, Yoselin Rivas, told police she found the child unresponsive and later was charged in connection to the baby’s death. Rivas has awaited trial for the past seven years.
Peerwani, approached by Rivas’ defense attorney Wes Ball in January, provided a written opinion to the court about the initial autopsy, clarifying that there was no way an autopsy alone could create a timeline of the child’s death and entirely confirm that Rivas was guilty.
Peerwani said he was not consulted when Rivas was indicted.
“[The DA’s Office] ran without talking to me and concluded [Rivas] was the person that caused injury,” Peerwani told the Star-Telegram in a phone call Saturday. “From my perspective there were two people involved in this incident, the father and of course, Yoselin Rivas. The father was with the child from 5 in the morning, and at some point later in the day, the mother came to the house and was there … for hours.”
Peerwani said there were two questions that were crucial to the case: whether he could say which of the two parents might have caused the injuries and whether he could precisely say when the injury occurred. Both questions were unable to be concluded from an autopsy.
“I did say the child lost consciousness at or near the time of injury, but I couldn’t predict how long the child would have been conscious, and therefore, there’s no way I could predict what was going on,” Peerwani said. “At this point the child’s body temperature was like 90 degrees … one could say the child was dead for many hours, but unfortunately this is fraught with a lot of problems. It’s totally unreliable and one should never use that in a trial because you could very easily make a very significant error in that. The rate of cooling the body is unpredictable.”
Peerwani wrote in his letter to the court. that the autopsy could “not establish either the intent of the perpetrator that caused the fatal injury or who the perpetrator was.”
“The bottom line is that both parents had access to the child and in fact, the child was battered, and both parents were there with the child,” Peerwani said. “I could never say from what I’ve seen who did it and when it was done.”
Peerwani’s written statement created reasonable doubt that Rivas was solely responsible for the baby’s death.
In particular, looking at the baby’s body temperature, a disclosure document filed by prosecutors stated, the possibility of a broadened period for the child’s time of death would mean “another adult would be in the timeline.”
Madelynn’s father, Christopher Sanchez, previously told the DA’s office that he believed Rivas was responsible, but in a March 21 meeting, Sanchez said he didn’t know, according to the document.
Officials with the DA’s office could not be reached for comment Saturday about their motion to dismiss Rivas’ case, which was approved by the court on Thursday.
The Saginaw Police Department referred questions to the district attorney’s office.
This story was originally published April 2, 2022 at 2:33 PM.
