A judge on Monday postponed until March the manslaughter trial of a Greenwood woman charged in the death last summer of her 10-month-old son in the Ouachita Mountains.
Authorities have said methamphetamine-induced hallucinations led Brooke Floyd, 21, to abandon her son, Harper Alexander Floyd, and her husband, Brian Floyd, 33. She is not charged in her husband's death.
Floyd is tentatively scheduled for trial March 19 in Yell County Circuit Court in Danville. Her attorney said Monday that he expects to stand by Floyd's plea of innocent by reason of mental disease or defect.
Preliminary autopsy results released after Harper's body was found lying face down on July 29, 2014, indicated that his cause of death was exposure and abandonment. Toxicology tests were expected to show the cause of death for Brian Floyd.
Yell County sheriff's Capt. John Foster declined comment Monday. Coroner Donna Wells said she still has not received autopsy results from the state medical examiner's office.
Defense attorney Bill James of Little Rock said he also had not received the results for the infant or the father from the prosecutor's office. James said he believes the prosecutor's office would have shared the results if it had received them.
The long process is "slower than usual" but "not unheard of," James said.
Prosecuting Attorney Tom Tatum II was in court and did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Monday.
Speaking after Judge Jerry Don Ramey agreed to the trial delay, James said he expects that the case will end up being tried before a jury in late spring and added that Brooke Floyd is able to help with her defense.
Still, James said he continues to await results of her mental evaluation.
"It's never been a question of whether she was competent" to stand trial, James said.
Rather, he said, the issue is whether she had emotional or mental issues that led to her use of drugs.
James said the Arkansas Supreme Court has held that drug-created psychosis is not a defense in Arkansas. But drugs can sometimes provide evidence of other mental-health problems, he said.
"There are things in her history that I think the jury needs to hear about," James said.
According to an affidavit signed by Foster on Aug. 4, U.S. Forest Service personnel found Brooke Floyd scratched, bruised and barefoot in a ditch in the Ouachita National Forest on July 25.
A ground and air search for her missing son and husband followed, with the Arkansas State Police, the FBI and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission helping.
According to the affidavit, Brooke Floyd told officers that she had left her son with her husband so she could seek help because people were chasing her family. Later, when she was more lucid, she said she and her husband had been hallucinating and fighting, the affidavit added.
In a motion filed Dec. 30 seeking the trial delay, James said the defense and the prosecution were "working through some discovery [evidence-sharing] issues that need to be resolved ... as well as plea negotiations are ongoing."
James said Monday, though, that the two sides were "not really to the point where we're really discussing anything specific." The defense will "certainly listen" to any offers, but the case probably will go to trial, he said.
Floyd, who is out on bond, is "drug free" now, James said.
"She is doing everything she can to get her life back as normal as possible," he said.
State Desk on 01/06/2015