How Could You? Hall of Shame-Samuel Hudson case-Child Death UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions

Today’s entry is from Marshall, Texas where Cynthia Hudson was convicted of capital murder in the beating death of her adopted 13 year old son, Samuel, two years ago. “Prosecutors said Samuel was beaten with a broom handle, a mop handle, a rake, a baseball bat and a computer cord. ”

She received a life prison sentence.
Woman Convicted Of Killing Adopted Son
[KTBS.com 12/23/10]

“Hudson’s husband, William, is awaiting trial on charges of tampering with evidence and injury to a child. He is expected to go on trial next year, Cass District Attorney Clint Allen said.”

Trial

“The defendant, 47-year-old Cynthia Hudson of Queen City, was indicted in February 2009 for the Dec. 3, 2008, death of 13-year-old Samuel Hudson. Her trial began last Thursday in the 71st District Courtroom. It was moved from Cass County to Harrison due to pre-trial publicity, the Texarkana Gazette previously reported. Jurors also were selected from a panel of Harrison County citizens because of pre-trial publicity.

Ms. Hudson faces life without parole. However within the last month, prosecutors have tried to offer her a plea bargain to turn that around but she rejected it.

According to the offer, the state would drop the capital murder charge if she would plead to murder in return for a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

When asked by her attorney David James outside of the presence of the jury if rejecting the offer was still her position today, Ms. Hudson replied, “That’s correct.”

When asked if she wanted to proceed with that position, she replied again – “That’s correct.

Cass County District Attorney Clint Allen noted prosecutors produced evidence through testimony and photographs that Samuel was restrained with plastic zip ties.

“In addition, we have pictures from the funeral home that can show restraint marks on the wrists and ankles,” he said while several motions were being made outside the presence of the jury.

Allen also noted Samuel died of starvation and blunt force injuries. He added Ms. Hudson confessed to murder and to beating Samuel with a cord and a stick.

She is accused of using a cord, broom handle, mop handle, a garden rake and a baseball bat to beat Hudson, who lived in the home with his two siblings and three other children.

During Monday’s testimony, Samuel’s 14-year-old sister, also living in the Hudson home the time of his death, testified how her adoptive mother made them fast for days with little food and water to drink. She recalled a time where she made her in particular fast for three months – April through June – with only a peanut butter sandwich and water to drink once every two-week period.

The girl testified they were confined to a prayer room – with no carpet and TV – during the fasts and wore few clothes. She said she would have to wait on Ms. Hudson for a restroom break and when she couldn’t wait, she’d end up having accidents. She said she lost weight as a result of the fast.

Answering questions from defense attorney James, the teen testified she did not see Samuel often prior to Thanksgiving. She said he mostly stayed in his room and didn’t show up for home school. She said she did come into contact with him one morning while passing him some food as he stood at his bedroom door, reaching his hand out to grab it.

“He never came out of the room,” she said.

She said the day her brother died, she didn’t see him but she did hear him repenting and exclaiming he wanted to die. “I honestly don’t know where it was coming from, but I know what Samuel sounds like,” she said.

Answering a question from the defense, she said she doesn’t know where her adoptive mother or her other brother was at the time Samuel made those two statements. She said Ms. Hudson’s husband, Bill Hudson, was at work.

In addition to hearing Samuel’s outcry, the sister said she heard a noise as if someone was receiving licks.

The sister said when police came to investigate her brother’s death, Ms. Hudson told her and the other children “not to tell on her. She said ‘I’m going to whoop you ’til the cows come home’,” the sister said. “She told me that because she didn’t want anybody to tell on her.”

Al Jennings, a licensed plumber and friend of the Hudsons, said he came by the day of Samuel’s death to retrieve a key from Ms. Hudson to do some work at her church. When asked what was Ms. Hudson’s demeanor that day, he described it as “normal.”

Jennings’ wife, Lois Jennings, said she visited a devastated Ms. Hudson in the hospital a couple of days after Samuel’s death.

“Bill called me and told me Cindy had attempted suicide and they took her to the hospital to get stabilized,” said Ms. Jennings.

She said when she walked in the hospital room, Ms. Hudson told her that she did not try to commit suicide.

“She said, ‘I laid down my life to protect my family,'” Ms. Jennings recalled. “She said, ‘I thought if I took the blame … wrote the note … that Bill could keep the children and raise my family.'”

When asked by the DA if she was aware that Ms. Hudson had confessed to the murder charge, Ms. Jennings said, “Yes.”

When asked if she was aware that Samuel died of blunt force injuries and starvation, Ms. Jennings said, “No.”

She reiterated that her friend didn’t intend to live through the death, however.

“If she didn’t live through that, then there’s no blame to anybody. Bill could raise the kids,” said Ms. Jennings.

“The same Bill that works all the time?” the DA inquired.

“Bill would get somebody to help him,” Ms. Jennings replied.

The trial, expected to conclude today, resumes at 8:45 a.m., with 5th District Judge Ralph Burgess presiding.”
Teen testifies about forced fasting in a special ‘prayer room’
[Marshall News Messenger 12/21/10 by Robin Y. Richardson]

Pound Pup Legacy 2008 files can be found here.

Update: “Cass County District Attorney Clint Allen said Cynthia Hudson’s appeal is scheduled for oral arguments beginning 9 a.m. Feb. 15, in the commissioners courtroom inside the historical Harrison County Courthouse in Marshall.

Hudson, 49, was sentenced to life without parole in the beating death of Samuel Hudson, who was 13 at the time of his death on Dec. 3, 2008. Texarkana attorney Troy A. Hornsby is handling Hudson’s appeal.

Hudson is appealing her capital murder conviction on several points, including that the Cass County DA’s Office did not prove she intentionally caused Samuel Hudson’s death; that the presiding judge did not give the option to convict Hudson of a lesser charge of manslaughter; and that the judge did not originally properly identify her punishment as life without parole for capital murder.

Hudson is also appealing the state’s case regarding the kidnapping of her son at time of his death.

Hornsby’s appeal states a new trial is warranted, but Allen maintains his office proved the case, which was tried in Marshall before a Harrison County jury in December 2010.

At that trial, Samuel’s older brother testified his adopted mother beat the boy with a mop handle, a broom handle, a rake, a computer cord and a baseball bat while his hands and feet were bound with plastic zip ties.

The brother and a younger sister also testified Samuel was locked in his room for up to two weeks before his death and he was without food and water for much of the time.

The Dallas medical examiner who testified in the case ruled Samuels’s death was caused by internal hemorrhaging from excessive beatings during a two-week period, and starvation.

Allen said the evidence, including the autopsy and photographs of the teenager and testimony by his siblings, proved Hudson’s intent to kill the boy.

Hudson is also appealing the judgment signed by Judge Burgess 40 days after her trial, wherein the original judgment stated her sentence was life; the amended judgment stated her sentence was life without parole. The appeal states the court didn’t have the authority to correct the judgment, though Allen said there are only two punishments for capital murder: life without parole or lethal injection. The district attorney’s office dropped the death penalty option before the trial began.

Allen says because Samuel was locked in his room and restrained with zip ties, he had been kidnapped at the time of his death, thus warranting the capital murder charge.

Cynthia Hudson and her husband, William “Bill” Hudson, testified at trial that Samuel’s older brother, who was his natural sibling, was the murderer and that Samuel’s death occurred while Cynthia Hudson was walking her other children on their property and Bill Hudson was at work.

The district attorney, with evidence of extensive traumas and starvation during an extended period of time, argued that Cynthia Hudson systematically beat and starved the boy during a period of about two weeks prior to his death.

Bill Hudson has also been charged with multiple counts of child abuse and Allen said his trial is scheduled for the week of March 6. His attorney petitioned for a change of venue due to pretrial publicity, and the case will be tried at the Bowie County Courthouse at New Boston.

Charges against Hudson include first-degree injury to a child by omission for allegedly failing to feed Samuel Hudson; three counts of injury to a child and a single count of injury to a child by omission in the alleged abuse of other adopted children. Punishments for the various charges range from five to 99 years in prison.”

Queen City woman to appeal life sentence in teen slaying
[News Journal 1/22/12 by Brenda Brown]

“Arguments in the appeal of a Cass County woman sentenced to life in prison without parole for the death of her son began here Wednesday before the Sixth Court of Appeals.”

“The case was moved from Cass County to Harrison County because of pretrial publicity.

Hudson’s attorney, Troy Hornsby, said Wednesday that there was no evidence presented in the trial that proved his client intentionally killed the teen. He said the court should given the jury an option of convicting Hudson on manslaughter charges, a lesser offense.

“Capital murder requires intent,” Hornsby said.

Although Hudson admitted her involvement in a suicide note she wrote after her son’s death, “in nowhere did it explicitly address intent,” he said.

He said she used the term “murder,” but “I’m not sure it is an admission of anything other than its specific intent,” he said. He said when people use the term murder, they may not be really admitting to every element of the offense of the Texas law.

“It’s clear that the intent was punishment,” he said, saying Hudson indicated in the suicide note what happened.

“That note has a line, and the line is that ‘at 2:30, whipped Samuel – he peed on carpet.’

“That is the only direct evidence we have from Cynthia Hudson as to why she did this,” Hornsby said. “There’s your intent. It’s evidence of punishment.”

Hornsby said Hudson’s suicide note established that she committed manslaughter – not intentional murder.

Officials also said Hudson kidnapped her son in the course of committing murder because she used zip ties to bind his hands and feet.

Hornsby said he doesn’t think that should be considered kidnapping.

“If she has possession of her own child at home, and she uses zip ties to tie up the child … you say that’s evidence of kidnapping? It can’t be considered because she is taking legal action that she is entitled to as the parent of the child,” he said.

Cass County District Attorney Clint Allen contended that Hudson did kidnap her son.

“The state’s position on the kidnapping issue is that when the defendant confined the victim to the room, she utilized the zip ties and then she began utilizing deadly force,” said Allen.

“We do think it meets the legal requirements for a kidnapping because she did restrain his liberty by both the zip ties and by using deadly force where she utilized up to six weapons including a baseball bat.”

Allen said the injuries caused by the weapons “weakened him to such a degree that he was unable to escape, to call for any help.”

“He had broken bones from the use of these weapons, so after the appellate had used each of these weapons on him … he was stuck in that room zip-tied. He could not escape. He could not summon medical treatment.”
Court hears appeal of woman convicted in son’s death
[News Journal 2/17/12 by Robin Y. Richardson]

Zip-tied and 6 weapons to beat him and you didn’t intend death? You have got to be kidding!

REFORM Puzzle Pieces

The discipline techniques used by this family should have been the denial factor to rule out adoption. The fasting and peanut butter sandwich diet is “classic” religious punishment that we have seen in multiple foster child and adoptive child abuse cases.

Still needing William to be accountable for Samuel’s death. His trial was supposed to begin in 2011 but now is slated to begin in March 2012.

Update 2: “William David “Bill” Hudson, 51, who was being tried in Bowie County for second-degree felony injury to a child, pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser charge of injury to a child by reckless omission, a state jail felony; and tampering with physical evidence, a third degree state prison felony. Fifth District Judge Ralph Burgess set sentencing for Sept. 4, at the Cass County Courthouse.

Hudson’s wife was convicted of capital murder in the death of 13-year-old Samuel Hudson. The boy died from internal injuries suffered when he was beaten with a mop handle, a broom handle, a garden rake, a computer cord and a baseball bat on the day he died, Dec. 8, 2008.

Instead of the felony prison charge, Burgess said Hudson agreed to the lesser state jail charge of injury to a child, which carries a penalty of not less than 180 days and not more than two years in state jail. His guilty plea to tampering with physical evidence could result in a prison sentence of not less than two years or more than 10 years, and a fine of up to $10,000.

Hudson’s attorney, Al Smith of Texarkana, said afterward his client could receive deferred adjudication on both charges, meaning if he fulfills probation requirements the charges will be dismissed. Hudson may also petition the court later to have the cases sealed after a certain number of years.

Smith said Hudson’s guilty plea to tampering with physical evidence relates to the fact that “there were items moved at the crime scene that should not have been moved.” In Cynthia Hudson’s trial, testimony revealed the items she used to beat Samuel have never been found.

“I will say Mr. Hudson’s plea recognizes he moved items at the crime scene he should not have moved,” Smith said.”

Man pleads guilty in adopted son’s death

[News Journal 8/5/12 by Brenda Brown]

Pathetic sentence for a heinous crime. He may have been at work for the final blows, but this child was purposely starved for a long period of time.

Update 3: William was sentenced to 10 years probation and fines on Tuesday September 4, 2012.

“Fifth District Judge Ralph Burgess sentenced William David “Bill” Hudson, 51, to five years deferred adjudication probation and a $1,500 fine for each charge. Last month, Hudson was on trial for second-degree felony injury to a child when testimony was cut short and the trial ended in a plea agreement for a lesser charge, injury to a child by reckless omission involving 13-year-old Samuel Hudson, and tampering with evidence.

Injury to a child by reckless omission is a state jail felony; tampering with physical evidence is a third degree state prison felony.

Hudson’s wife Cynthia was found guilty of capital murder of the boy by a Harrison County jury in December 2010. Samuel died on Dec. 3, 2008, in the family’s home in Queen City. Her conviction has been overturned by a higher court and she will receive a new trial at a date and place not yet set.”

“

Bill Hudson was accused of failing to ensure the boy was fed, as it related to the boy’s death by blunt force trauma and starvation. Hudson was not charged with any physical assault to the child, who, according to testimony in his wife Cynthia Hudson’s trial in Marshall in December 2010, died of internal injuries after the teen was beaten with a mop handle, a broom handle, a garden rake, a computer cord and a baseball bat on the day he died. The medical examiner in her trial testified Samuel also suffered other beatings prior to the day he died.

 

Cass County District Attorney Clint Allen said Bill Hudson was also sentenced to standard conditions of probation including abstaining from alcohol consumption and submitting to chemical testing, 500 hours community service, a DNA sample on file with the state, and no contact with the other children who lived in his home.

 

If Hudson successful completes the terms of his adjudicated probation, he will not have a felony conviction on his criminal record. As part of the plea agreement, Judge Burgess dismissed four charges of injury to a child involving Samuel’s siblings.

 

“This case did not turn out like I had hoped,” Allen said in a written statement. “We had some unanticipated testimony from the medical examiner at trial which adversely affected our case (we were trying the Injury to a Child case pertaining to Samuel), so we had to make some decisions on the fly to try and salvage it.

 

“We took several factors into consideration in making the plea offer that we made. We also considered the hardship and uncertainty that has already been imposed on the other kids for a number of years now. I’m certainly not happy about the ultimate disposition of this case, but it’s what I got and what I have to live with.”

 

Cynthia Hudson’s capital murder conviction was overturned by the 6th Court of Appeals and though she remains incarcerated in a Texas prison, she has been granted the opportunity to be released on bond, set at $500,000. Judge Burgess denied bond at her first hearing, saying the bondsman did not prove adequate assets at that time.

 

A Harrison County jury found Cynthia Hudson guilty of murdering Samuel in conjunction with kidnapping as he was forced to stay in his room and his feet and hands were bound by zip ties while she struck him with various objects. Those objects were never found, and at her trial Samuel’s older biological brother testified Cynthia ordered he and Bill Hudson to remove those items from the home; to date, they have never been found.

 

Bill Hudson was not on trial in August for tampering with evidence, and Allen had said that would be a separate trial, but when he pleaded to the injury to a child charge, he also pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence.

 

The medical examiner, Dr. Chester Gwin from the Southwestern Institute Of Forensic Sciences Of Dallas, testified at both Hudson trials.

 

Bill Hudson’s attorney, Al Smith of Texarkana, questioned Dr. Gwin regarding the “starvation process” as it pertains to children and adults, and Gwin stated starvation was not the direct cause of Samuel’s death and the level of starvation had not reached the level of “serious bodily injury” on the day he died, as stated in the State’s indictment.

 

Dr. Gwin said the body goes through various changes during starvation and that it is not an overnight occurrence. He said a body can survive 40 days without food, “depending on the starting point” and condition of the person.

 

Smith honed in on Samuel’s condition on the date of his death, noting at one point that Samuel was “a short thin kid for his age.” Samuel was 4 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 88 pounds when he died, Dr. Gwin said.

 

In the 911 call for help on the day Samuel died, Bill Hudson stated Samuel committed suicide by choking himself in his bedroom. Dr. Gwin testified in Cynthia Hudson’s trial that it is impossible for anyone to choke themselves to death because they would pass out before they would die. He also stated Samuel’s left arm was broken and he could not have choked himself.

 

Instead of the felony prison charge, Smith said Hudson agreed to the lesser state jail charge of injury to a child, which carries a penalty of not less than 180 days and not more than two years in state jail. His guilty plea to tampering with physical evidence could have resulted in a prison sentence of not less than two years or more than 10 years, and a fine of up to $10,000. The original trial charge of injury to a child is a second degree felony and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in state prison.

 

After the trial, Hudson’s attorney said the guilty plea to tampering with physical evidence relates to the fact that “there were items moved at the crime scene that should not have been moved.”

 

Hudson gets probation, fines related to son’s death

[Atlanta Citizen’s Journal 9/8/12 by Brenda Brown]

Unbelievable!