The Colorado Court of Appeals rejected a request for post-conviction relief from a Grand Junction woman who was found guilty of murdering her 11-month-old foster child in 2014.
A three-judge panel ruled last week that there was nothing amiss in the trial, nor the 31-year sentence for Sydney Danielle White, who was convicted in the death of the infant child after she was removed from life support.
“Before removing her life support, the attending physicians discovered that (the child) had skull fractures, bleeding and swelling to the brain,” Judge Lino Lipinsky wrote in the ruling, which was joined by Judges Gilbert Roman and Elizabeth Harris.
“The investigators assigned to the case reported that White admitted to accidentally dropping (the child), resulting in a minor cut on (the child’s) lip and a bloody nose,” Lipinsky added. “White also told the investigator that, three days later, when she could not get (the child) to stop screaming, White held (the child) by the neck and with both hands and shook her multiple times.”
In her appeal, which White filed without an attorney, she tried to argue that she deserved a new trial because her then defense counsel had a “potential” conflict of interest, failed to investigate aspects of the case, and that she was coerced into take a plea deal by caseworkers and detectives.
The appeals court, however, ruled that White offered only conclusory or vague statement to all of her allegations.
White currently is serving her sentence in the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo. She is eligible for parole in January 2028.