Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Deputy Editor
A Clovis woman entered an Alford plea Thursday in federal court to multiple counts of child abuse.
Kayla Bass, 25, “didn’t plead guilty,” her attorney Jonathon Miller said. “There was evidence that could convict her, however, she maintains her factual innocence.”
An Alford plea, according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, “registers a formal claim neither of guilt nor innocence toward charges brought against a defendant in criminal court.”
But anyone pleading Alford, “accepts all the ramifications of a guilty verdict (i.e. punishment) without first attesting to having committed the crime.”
Bass faces up to 18 years in prison. Sentencing will follow a Department of Corrections diagnostic evaluation, which may take up to two months.
District Attorney Andrea Reeb said in a press release, “In my 19 years of being a prosecutor, this is one of the saddest and worst child abuse cases I have seen ...
“A small child does not have the verbal ability to tell anyone that the abuse is occurring.”
In April 2013, Clovis police responded to a call from the Children, Youth and Family Division regarding an 18-month-old boy with bruises on his head, chest, back, feet, arms, hands face and genitals, according to Reeb’s news release. Investigators determined the child’s clavicle had been broken and found cigarette burns and bite marks on his body, the release stated.
The child was treated in Lubbock for his injuries and “remained hospitalized for many days.”
Miller, Bass’ attorney, said he hopes the evaluation will show she “is a troubled young woman who was put in a bad situation.”
“We are going to see what the diagnostic evaluation has to say to show what her mental state was at the time.”
