Until Proven Innocent 2016 - ABC news online - 20/20: Hannah Overton: Home for the Holidays TV -
This was a case that had gone terribly terribly awry. Until Proven Innocent: The Hannah Overton Story, 2016
The defense says they have yet to see crucial evidence removed from the Overton house. ibid. television news
The case of an abusive [adoptive] mother who poisoned [Andrew Burd] her son [salt] and deliberately killed him. ibid.
This was a case of salt intoxication [hypernatraemia]. ibid.
Finally, Hannah’s home; she’s with her children. ibid.
Four and a half years ago, Hannah Overton, a devout Christian and mother of five, stood in a Texas courtroom and was handed a sentence of life in prison for the 2006 salt poisoning death of a 4-year-old she was trying to adopt, Andrew Burd.
This week, Hannah, 35, returned to that same courthouse for the latest hearing in her post-conviction legal battle. As court proceedings began, her eldest child, Isaac, just 8 at the time of his mother's conviction, now 13, could be seen with his father, Larry, among the group of devoted supporters. The hearing is expected to come to an end early next week.
In February, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the trial court judge who originally heard Overton’s case to ‘make findings of fact as to whether the applicant is actually innocent based upon newly discovered evidence’. The court also ruled that the hearing would include arguments and testimony regarding claims of ineffective counsel, and whether prosecutors mishandled evidence that would have helped Hannah’s defense.
At Overton’s original trial in 2007, the prosecution portrayed her as a mother who had lost control. Frustrated with a naughty child, prosecutors said, she tried to punish him with seasoning mixed in water.
The defense presented the jury with a medical mystery. They presented evidenced that suggested that Andrew might have had Pica, an eating disorder characterized by an obsessive appetite and that Andrew accidentally poisoned himself by consuming a fatal amount of sodium. Teachers and babysitters said they had seen Andrew’s bizarre habits too. The day Andrew died Overton said she found him in the kitchen pantry but could not determine what he had consumed, if anything. ABC online article 26th April 2012, ‘Texas Mum Convicted in Salt Poisoning Death Back in Court, Hopes to be Freed’
Was it murder by force-feeding? Was his mother to blame? Or was it all a bizarre medical mystery? 20/20: Hannah Overton: Home for the Holidays, ABC 2014
How a mother of five came home for the holidays … Last night Hannah Overton got to do something she has dreamed of and fought for for the last seven years – sit down and have Christmas with her family. ibid.
When he arrived at the clinic Andrew’s condition was critical. Blood tests later revealed a medical oddity: Andrew had salt poisoning. ibid.
‘We did have problems with him; he had a real obsession with eating.’ ibid. Hannah
But the defense introduced a medical mystery, suggesting Andrew might have Pica, a strange eating disorder marked by obsessive appetites, sometimes for things that aren’t even edible. ibid.
The highest criminal court in Texas overruled the judge and reversed Hannah’s conviction. ibid.