Otty Sanchez Gets Jury Trial to Determine Competency for Decapitation Trial

November 13, 2009 by Cathy Ribble
Filed under: News

A judge ruled Thursday that Otty Sanchez will get a jury trial to determine whether she is mentally competent to stand trial for decapitating her three-week-old baby.

Defense attorney Ed Camara believes his client was afflicted with postpartum psychosis. Approximately one in 1,000 women with postpartum psychosis suffer dangerous delusions and desires to hurt their child. This is different from the medical condition known as postpartum depression, which occurs in as many as one in five new mothers.

The jury sitting for either the competency trial or the capital murder charge will have a heinous case before them. The autopsy and investigative reports of what was done to this baby are sickening.

Sanchez spent two weeks in a state mental hospital when she was found wandering around a drugstore last year, saying she was shopping for a trip to China. Even though she was a new mother, she was treated in a hospital emergency room in July for only a few hours when she reported hearing dark voices and then sent home.

Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez was found dead six days later, decapitated and missing his fingers and toes. Police reports reflect that the baby’s mother, Otty Sanchez, was wailing about how the devil made her do it. The jury will likely hear Sanchez screaming on recordings of the call placed by Sanchez’s sister for emergency assistance upon finding the baby.

The court has ordered two psychiatric evaluations which concluded that Sanchez was competent to stand trial, but Ed Camera, Sanchez’s attorney, told the Court that he received a medical report on Tuesday that brings that into question. The competency trial by jury has not yet been scheduled.

Yvonne Gonzalez, the Bexar County prosecutor, plans to seek the death penalty in the case if Sanchez is found to be sane and the State is permitted to go forward with the capital murder trial.

Sanchez had apparently been “functioning quite well,” holding down a job for several years. Prosecutors are still gathering medical records to determine if their is a long history of mental illness.