BALTIMORE (AP) - Separate convictions a decade apart have been vacated for a Maryland woman found by courts to have abused her 3-year-old son, who died years later from previous injuries.
The state’s intermediate-level Court of Special Appeals ruled this month that Tamekia Martin’s manslaughter conviction shouldn’t have occurred, The Baltimore Sun reported.
The court found that the original agreement in which Martin entered a plea in 2009 prevented Baltimore City prosecutors from bringing later charges after her son Damaud died at a state-licensed group home in 2014. But Martin’s first conviction also had been vacated last year, according to court records and to the Attorney General’s Office, which is deciding what to do next.
Martin’s defense attorney, assistant public defender Sharon Dubey, declined to comment on the situation.
Prosecutors said that in 2008 Martin slapped Damaud while he sat atop a bunk bed, causing him to fall off and strike his head on a television stand, the newspaper reported.
Investigators said Martin denied fault. In 2009, she entered an Alford plea - which allows a defendant to maintain innocence while acknowledging enough evidence to likely result in a conviction - to one count of child abuse resulting in severe physical injury. She received a suspended sentence and probation.
Damaud remained in a coma-like state until he died in 2014 at the group home in Anne Arundel County. A medical examiner ruled Damaud’s death a homicide due to traumatic brain injuries he received in 2008.
Martin was charged again in 2017 with child abuse resulting in death and manslaughter. Her attorney at the time argued her 2009 plea precluded another round of charges. A court disagreed, and a jury convicted Martin on both counts in March 2019. She was sentenced to six years in prison, and paroled earlier this year, according to Dubey.
The Court of Special Appeals declared this month that the state “breached, at a minimum, the spirit of the agreement in charging and prosecuting” Martin for her son’s death. Electronic court records also show Martin’s 2009 conviction was “vacated,” with the case reactivated for a hearing in July 2019 and “all counts disposed” the next month. Other details weren’t immediately available Friday.
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