Court affirms 99-year sentence in child's death

TEXARKANA, Texas -An appellate court in Texarkana has affirmed the 99-year sentence of a mother found guilty last year by a Bowie County jury of failing to protect her children from a violent father.
Khadijah Wright, 27, violated a Child Protective Services safety plan that prohibited Benearl Lewis from being alone with the couple's children, including 4-year-old D'Money Lewis. D'Money suffered fatal injuries March 6, 2018.
Lewis is serving a life term for murder in connection with the death. His sentence was affirmed by the 6th District Court of Appeals in Texarkana last year. Monday the higher court affirmed the 99-year term Wright received for injury to a child by omission, rejecting arguments that the lawyer who defended her at trial was ineffective.
"Khadijah Wright and her co-defendant Benearl Lewis, were fairly tried in Bowie County in two separate jury trials; their sentences, each the maximum allowed under Texas law, were upheld and affirmed by the Sixth Court of Appeals in Texarkana. Although procedurally, these cases have come to their legal conclusion, the devastating evidence of prolific and prolonged child abuse inflicted upon their victim, their own child D'Money Lewis, will not soon be forgotten by all of us in law enforcement who worked on the investigation and prosecution of these cases," First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp said.
Testimony during the trial revealed that child welfare agencies in three states had investigated allegations of abuse and neglect for D'Money and his three siblings 19 times beginning in 2013. The couple often moved from one state to another so that investigations would be closed, according to records.
Wright and Lewis repeatedly violated the safety plan that prohibited Lewis from being alone with the children or from spending the night in their home. Wright told investigators that Lewis wasn't living with her and apparently she hid him when caseworkers made home visits, according to records.
At trial witnesses testified that Wright abruptly left her job at a Texarkana manufacturing plant before her shift was over. Hours later she and Lewis stopped and approached police working a traffic accident. They claimed D'Money fell from a chest freezer and that they were driving him to the hospital.
First responders sprang into action, performing life-saving measures on the child in the floorboard of a fire truck as they hailed an ambulance. At trial, medical experts testified that the severity of D'Money's injuries made the account given by his parents dubious.
Wright is being held at the Murray Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Gatesville. She will be eligible for parole Feb. 19, 2049. Lewis is being held at the Telford Unit in New Boston. He will be parole-eligible March 9, 2048. Eligibility for parole is not a guarantee that parole will be granted.