GALVESTON, Texas — The attorney handling legal appeals for Kimberly Dawn Trenor, convicted of capital murder in the notorious Baby Grace killing, will ask an appellate court to consider a new trial.
Greg Russell has worked the appeal since Trenor’s Feb. 2 conviction for the July 25, 2007, beating death of her daughter, Riley Ann Sawyers.
Trenor’s co-defendant and husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 26, was convicted Friday, also of capital murder. Barring a successful appeal, the husband and wife will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
The 2-year-old toddler died a slow, painful death, testimony revealed.
Russell said he mailed Trenor’s appeal to the First Court of Appeals in Houston on Monday.
"One of the arguments, points of error — and we’re going to have a couple — is that the evidence is insufficient that she did not have the culpable mental state for capital murder," Russell said.
Russell declined to discuss additional points, but said the state failed to prove Trenor, 21, meant to kill Sawyers or that she intentionally or knowingly killed her.
Jurors chose capital murder convictions rather than lesser included charges of manslaughter, which deals with reckless incidents that result in death.
After Sawyers’ death, which prosecutors say was from a daylong disciplinary session that went bad, Zeigler admitted to storing Sawyers’ body for weeks in a box inside his carport in Spring.
Zeigler also admitted to tossing the box off the Galveston railroad bridge.
Oct. 29, 2007, a fisherman found the box containing the toddler’s remains wrapped in three plastic bags on an island in Galveston Bay.
Galveston County sheriff’s investigators named the girl Baby Grace until learning her identity 26 days later.
There is no timetable for the appeal, Russell said.
"Sometimes it takes four months," Russell said. "Sometimes it takes a year. There’s no rhyme or reason. It has a lot to do with the backlog."
Trenor remained Monday at the Galveston County Jail after she was brought by bench warrant from state prison. She didn’t testify against her husband, and her four-hour videotaped interview with authorities, implicating the couple in Sawyers’ death, wasn’t admissible in Zeigler’s trial.
Prosecutors field a motion to compel Trenor to testify, offering her immunity for anything she said, Russell said.
The immunity would have applied if she was granted a new trial, and prosecutors wouldn’t have used her statements against her if her appeal were successful, Russell said.
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