LEAGUE CITY, Texas — Defense attorneys Wednesday attacked the validity of a videotaped confession, saying their bipolar client was off her medication and high on cocaine and ecstasy when she told police she had strangled her mother.
Erin Ashlyn Moffatt, 20, admitted during her interview with League City police that she strangled her mother, Jana S. Moffatt, 47, and helped dump her body in a Brazoria County oil field.
During the second day of testimony in Moffatt’s murder trial, defense attorney G. Byron Fulk questioned Cory Beyer, the lead investigator in the case.
During her interview, Moffatt agreed to speak to investigators without an attorney, but she said the word lawyer. Fulk said his client asked for legal representation, but the interview continued.
Moffatt, who used drugs and worked at a strip club, had only a ninth-grade education and suffered from bipolar disorder, testimony revealed.
Beyer asked Moffatt to sign a form, saying she wanted to voluntarily waive her rights and speak with police.
"She’s only 19, had nothing to eat, she’d not slept in three days, she’d taken 10 ecstasy pills and an 8-ball of cocaine and is bipolar, and that’s someone who freely and voluntarily gave away her rights?" Fulk asked Beyer.
Prosecutor Bill Reed objected to Fulk’s question, saying there was no proof of Moffatt’s impairment.
Judge Wayne J. Mallia, of the 405th District Court in Galveston, agreed with Reed and ordered the jury to disregard Fulk’s question.
Among the witnesses called by Reed, some testified they did drugs at Moffatt’s trailer. Although there were personal effects of Moffatt’s mother there, none testified they saw her.
Moffatt told police she stabbed her mother with a syringe, which her boyfriend Michael Corey Lewis provided, before grabbing an extension cord from the floor and strangling her.
Paul E. Neely, 41, testified he did cocaine once at the trailer and accidentally stepped on a syringe in the kitchen area.
"It was a pretty good size one," Neely said. "Like one you’d inject a horse with. The needle was bent in an L shape."
Neely attempted to move it, but Moffatt intervened, he testified.
"Erin picked it up and said to Michael Lewis, ‘We forgot to get rid of this,’" Neely testified. "I didn’t think nothing of it."
Brian A. Harrell testified he smoked and sold a small amount of marijuana when he lived with Lewis in a 20-foot, orange and faded white trailer at the park.
Harrell testified Moffatt wanted to "get rid of her mother."
"When you heard that, what did you think?" Reed asked.
"This girl’s a little crazy," Harrell testified.
