A woman who was only 17-years-old when her infant son arrived at a hospital in 1993 with life-threatening injuries and medical issues has lost what is likely her last legal challenge to overturn some of her convictions.
Angela Renee Leeman was granted an order from the Arizona Supreme Court last summer requiring a Pima County judge to take another look at the case after the Pima County Attorney’s conceded a possible trial error. The question for Judge James Marner was whether Leeman was indicted for a single offense in multiple counts, thus raising double jeopardy issues.
Leeman was sentenced to nearly 65 years in prison following her conviction on 13 counts of child abuse committed from April through June 1993. The abuse involved sodomy, nearly a dozen broken bones, and untreated herpes lesions which kept the baby from breathing and eating properly.
She has challenged her convictions several times over the last three decades, most recently in 2020 when she renewed her claim that “not a scintilla of evidence was presented at the trial showing that [she] was responsible for inflicting any of the injuries that the baby suffered.” Instead, the defense argued that Leeman’s only crime was failing to get help for her infant son.
Both Marner and the Court of Appeals denied her petition for post-conviction relief, but in July 2021 the Arizona Supreme Court ordered Marner to consider whether Leeman had a valid claim that her convictions were multiplicitous after the prosecuting agency conceded there may have been a previous error on that issue of law related to 8 of the 13 convictions.
When convictions are based on multiple violations of the same crime, the Court must determine whether the convictions are based on separate and distinct acts. If so, such separate acts may be punished separately, according to the Arizona Supreme Court.
After getting the case back, Marner ruled last fall there was sufficient evidence for a jury to convict Leeman on the 8 disputed counts even though the State again generally agreed with Leeman’s multiplicity argument. In explaining his ruling, Marner noted the required threshold to uphold the convictions was a finding that Leeman’s “intentional actions resulted” in the various injuries.
Marner concluded the trial evidence supported the jury’s verdicts on each count that Leeman “caused or permitted” the boy suffering, which was described as “many different injuries, at different times, caused by different mechanisms, while in the continuous and often sole custody of [Leeman] while she was abusing methamphetamine.”
Last week Marner’s ruling was affirmed by the Arizona Court of Appeals.
In its decision, the appellate court noted that Leeman’s jury was instructed that the law allowed them to find Leeman guilty if she had “aided or counseled” her boyfriend to commit the offenses or had provided means or opportunity for the abuse to be committed.
“In short, the state did not need to prove beyond a doubt that Leeman herself inflicted each injury to render her legally culpable for causing them,” the decision states.
That decision leaves Leeman with little hope any court will take up the matter again. She is scheduled to be released in July 2051.
Leeman did not appeal two minor drug convictions which account for about 10 years of her overall sentence.
READ MORE ABOUT LEEMAN’S CASE HERE
