FORT WORTH, Texas — After two days deliberating, a Tarrant County jury still hadn’t decided Thursday what the punishment should be for a Cleburne mother convicted of the attempted murder of her son and injury to a child by omission.
A district attorney spokeswoman said she can't recall a trial in recent history that has taken so long, including the sentencing phase.
In her community of Cleburne, Danita Tutt was known as a mom who was helping her sick son, Colby, through a lifetime of surgeries. The local paper profiled the family’s fight to keep Colby alive in April 2016. A video of a Wrestlemania star surprising Colby, who was said to be terminally ill, went national.
But just months later, that story appeared to unravel, and Tuttt was arrested. Police accused her of lying about her child’s illness and withholding food from him, which they said led to unnecessary surgeries. Among the accused crimes: attempted murder.
"Ninety percent of the illnesses Colby had can't be faked,” said Chris Cooke, who was her attorney at the time she was arrested. “You can't fake the fact that he has microcephaly. You can't fake blood tests."
Cooke vehemently fought back against the allegations. Tutt’s friends and supporters spoke out, too.
"A colonoscopy? You can't make a doctor do that,” said friend Angel Cook, who has supported Tutt from the beginning. "You can't fake his chromosome disorder. You can't fake an esophagus problem."
But prosecutors said this was a case of medical child abuse, which is often referred to as Munchausen by proxy, where a caregiver makes up or causes an illness in the person they’re looking after. At one point, authorities said Tutt’s teenage son weighed 51 pounds.
It was a complicated case that jurors took on this past month, but ultimately they found Tutt guilty of two of four charges. She was found guilty of the attempted murder of her teenage son and injury to a child by omission. She was found not guilty of two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury.
Her supporters still call Tutt’s behavior caring and concerned, but the jury called it criminal.
The jury, which sent a note thar said they were deadlocked Thursday, continued deliberating on the sentence. They’ll go into day three on Friday. The DA’s office says if a sentence cannot be reached, they may have to seat a new jury for the sentencing phase.