A Cabazon couple failed to do the “bare minimum” to ensure their diabetic daughter received proper care, allowing the teen to slip into a coma and die, for which they should be held accountable, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
But attorneys for Gregory Lee Latham, 63, and Yvonne Dee Latham, 53, argued their clients tried to help their 17-year-old daughter, Nanette, the only way they knew how and didn't recognize she was in dire straits until it was too late.
The Lathams each face 15 years to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder and child endangerment charges and a sentence-enhancing allegation of corporal injury to a child resulting in death.
In April 2006, Nanette, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, suffered complications related to diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition brought on by a shortage of insulin, according to Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky.
In his opening statement, Strunsky told jurors that over a four-day period, the girl's condition deteriorated, while her parents stood by and watched.
Strunsky said Nanette was medically insured and there was no excuse for her parents' inaction. He said the victim had suffered a similar episode in 2001, and doctors told the Lathams to monitor her closely.
“This case is about doing the bare minimum to ensure a child lives,” the prosecutor said.
He said Yvonne Latham later told investigators she didn't want to summon paramedics because they would see the condition of the family's mobile home, which evidence technicians searched wearing protective gear to avoid contact with animal feces and an overflowing commode.
Deputy Public Defender O.G. Magno said Gregory Latham, himself a diabetic, tried to help his daughter, monitoring her blood sugar levels and administering insulin shots.
“He thought he knew how to take care of her,” the attorney told jurors. “He did what he thought would make her better.”
Magno said Nanette managed her own diet and was “weight conscious,” leading her to “mishandle her diabetes.”
“She was sort of a vegetarian,” the attorney said. “Diet is the most important thing to control diabetes.”
According to Magno, Nanette sometimes mistook diabetes-related complications as symptoms of the “flu or a cold.”
When she became bedridden, the Lathams thought their daughter was ill from exposure to mouse droppings that she had cleaned out of a disabled neighbor's trailer a day or two earlier, according to Magno.
Yvonne Latham's attorney, Victor Marshall, said his client had briefly separated from her husband and returned to their Cabazon mobile home around the time her daughter fell ill.
Marshall described the girl as “an extremely able-bodied teenager” who largely “took care of herself,” and thus her mother was not initially worried when the teen seemed lethargic.
The attorney said his client was the first to recognize Nanette needed medical attention and called paramedics.
“The only reasonable thing to do is what justice deserves — let Yvonne Latham go,” Marshall told jurors.
The Lathams were arrested more than a year after their daughter's death. They are each being held in lieu of $1 million bail at the Robert Presley jail in Riverside.
