Brandy Foreman killed her 12y/o disabled daughter. Was it the money or the meth?
Maybe it was the meth – , after all, had been smoking about half a gram of crank every day for nearly two months, the court records said.
Maybe it was the money – Foreman had been the trustee of a $175,000 account set up for her daughter; she'd already tapped $22,000 of it to buy a car, and she stood to inherit the rest if her girl died, according to the prosecutor.
Or, as her lawyer said, maybe it was that Brandy Foreman "just wore out" taking care of her 12-year-old daughter Daelynn, a girl born with cerebral palsy and seizure disorder who had an abnormally small brain, never walked or talked and who wore diapers every single day of her life.
No matter the reason, Brandy Foreman, in Daelynn's last year, never took the girl to the doctor. She kept her out of school and routinely refused to answer the door when the social worker came knocking.
When it came time to pay the price Friday for murdering her daughter by neglect, Brandy Foreman pulled the collar of her T-shirt over her mouth and shielded her face from the news cameras with her hand, to try to avoid recognition.
But she couldn't hide from the 25 years to life in prison handed down to her by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Marjorie Koller. It came as the result of Foreman's guilty plea two months ago to first-degree murder charges for Daelynn's death. The girl's 23.5-pound body was discovered July 31, 2006, in their Orangevale duplex. She was covered with bedsores that showed to the bone.
Koller called the murder "particularly egregious." And not just because of Daelynn's vulnerability and her wasting away due to malnutrition and neglect. Making it worse, the judge said, was the fact that Brandy Foreman had just about every social service available to her that the state offers – doctors, teachers, special schools, therapies. She also got Supplemental Security Income payments and an In-Home Support Services salary.
"The degree of neglect and indifference by the defendant to her child is hard to understand," Koller said, especially given that by most accounts, Foreman did an acceptable job taking care of Daelynn through the first 11 years of her life.
"It is not without notice," the judge added, "that there was a large amount of methamphetamine found inside the home" when authorities descended on the residence after Foreman called 911.
Deputy District Attorney Rick Miller, in a letter to the court for Friday's sentencing hearing, painted a picture of human atrocity.
"In the final months of Daelynn's life, she lay immobile in her bedroom, in her own urine and feces, cut off from outside help, medical attention, nutrients and hydration, while the defendant simply waited for her to rot and die," he wrote.
Outside court, Miller said, "It's hard to wrap your head around what (Brandy Foreman) actually did and how Daelynn actually had to die."
Methamphetamine might be one place to look. According to Miller's trial brief, investigators found 4.5 ounces of the psychoactive stimulant in Foreman's house the day she reported her daughter dead.
Assistant Public Defender Sue Karlton's court papers quoted an ex-housemate as saying everything "seemed fine" with Foreman and her care for her daughter until an old boyfriend got out of prison and moved in a few months before the girl died.
Miller confirmed the parolee in the house coincided with Daelynn's degradation. According to the prosecutor's papers, Foreman and the boyfriend smoked half a gram of crank a day. The two also were charged with dealing the substance. Those charges were dismissed against Foreman in the interest of justice.
As for the money angle, Miller said in an interview the existence of the trust fund, if it wasn't the sole motive for murder, "certainly would be kind of a silver lining at the end" for Foreman "once the end did come" for Daelynn.
They got the $175,000 as the result of winning a toxic mold lawsuit against a previous landlord. Miller's papers identified Daelynn as the beneficiary of the fund and Foreman as the initial trustee, later to be replaced by her own mother.
"According to the terms of the trust, in the event of Daelynn's death, the money would become the property of her immediate heir, in this case, the defendant," Miller wrote in his trial brief.
The prosecutor said in court papers that the only signed withdrawal from the account was $22,000 that went toward a Dodge Magnum, "purportedly for the transportation of Daelynn to and from school and medical appointments. However, she never took her to school in the car, and the back area of the station wagon could not accommodate a wheelchair because it contained large sub-woofer type speakers instead."
Karlton, the assistant public defender, called the case "a tragedy" and said she didn't really know where her client broke down.
"I think ultimately, the heartbreak of caring for a child that you love that is so disabled, and the difficulty on a daily basis, I think ultimately she just wore out," she said.
Although it was Brandy Foreman who was ultimately responsible for Daelynn's death, the case also exposed shortcomings in Sacramento County's Child Protective Services program. CPS acted on several complaints against Foreman over the years and one of its workers visited her home less than two months before Daelynn died. But in the end, it failed to protect her.
On a murder-sentencing day in which courtrooms usually are filled with loved ones who present heart-wrenching testimonials to the deceased, the only family around was the heavyset woman sitting in the defendant's chair, hiding from the cameras.
Sitting in the front row, Mary Jess Wilson, the medical director of California Children's Services, which coordinates services to the severely disabled like Daelynn, was one of only three spectators in the courtroom.
"Daelynn had no family members to speak for her," Wilson said. "As a community, during her sad little life, we failed her. It's a very sad case."
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