John Jefferson
Danielle Dechert (Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office).
A Texas woman with a history of putting children in dangerous situations will spend the next several decades behind bars for the death of her own infant daughter, authorities announced this week.
On Aug. 30, Danielle Ivy Dechert, 27, pleaded guilty to one count each of injury to a child and recklessly causing their death in a courtroom overseen by Blanco County 33rd District Judge J. Allan Garrett.
She was subsequently sentenced to 40 years in state prison, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a press release issued Monday.
Formal justice in this particular case was particularly quick in the Lone Star State as the fatal and tragic incident that took the life of the 5-month-old baby girl occurred earlier in August.
While details are scarce, the incident was in Blanco County — a sparsely populated, largely rural county whose namesake is the Blanco River located in the Texas Hill Country. The county seat, Johnson City, is located roughly 50 miles west of Austin.
On the day in question, the defendant got herself intoxicated by an illegal substance while “co-sleeping” with her daughter, according to court documents filed in the case. Sometime during her sleep, the mother rolled over onto her child and smothered her to death.
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The concept of co-sleeping is when an adult and a small child share a bed. The practice is advised against for infants by the American Academy of Pediatrics, due to the high risk of death.
But when Dechert realized what had happened, she more or less decided against taking any remedial action for quite some time.
After waking up, the mother “failed to provide any medical treatment or emergency aid for over eight hours while the child lay lifeless,” according to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
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Perhaps due to the limited law enforcement capabilities of the relatively tiny county, the case was investigated by the Texas Rangers and prosecuted by Austin-based prosecutors.
Dechert’s punishment, in the end, was enhanced due to a prior conviction for evading arrest in a motor vehicle in 2014 — which is typically a misdemeanor. This incident, wholly unrelated to the present case, was upgraded to a felony due to a concurrent charge of endangering a child.
Law&Crime reached out to both local authorities and the Texas Attorney General’s Office for additional details on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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As of this writing, Dechert has yet to be transferred to the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, though that is where she is likely headed soon.
Notably, there is an ongoing criminal case against Dechert in nearby Gillespie County, Texas — home to the famous German American town of Fredericksburg, the site of the first German settlers in Texas.
In that case, she is accused of one count of unlawful possession of a firearm. A status hearing in that case is currently slated for Nov. 14.
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