GALVESTON, Texas -- A doctor testified on Wednesday that a man accused of putting his baby daughter in a microwave had a history of mental illness and was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder three weeks before the baby was hurt, KPRC Local 2 reported.
Joshua Mauldin, 20, is charged with felony injury to a child. He has been accused of putting his 2-month-old daughter, Ana, in a Galveston hotel microwave and turning it on for 10 to 20 seconds in May.
Psychiatry professor Dr. Michael Fuller spent more than 100 hours evaluating Mauldin.
On the stand, he read a report from the Galveston County Jail after Mauldin was arrested.
Mauldin described in detail a hallucination before the baby was injured.
"He states that there was a demon inside … and describes it as having been enveloped in mud and it had dried and cracked, and the demons came out. Then, he couldn't help it," Fuller said.
Fuller is testifying on behalf of the defense. He reviewed volumes of documents of Mauldin's history of mental illness, including a depressive disorder with hallucinations and a problem with low blood sugar.
"He had eaten very little that night and it's very possible that he was passing through a period of hypoglycemia at about the time and during the time that this event happened," Fuller said.
Fuller could not say if Mauldin was legally insane when Mauldin's daughter was hurt.
"The severity of those mental defects were not singularly or in an additive way sufficiently severe to satisfy the very rigorous code that we use in Texas for defining insanity," Fuller said.
During cross-examination, Fuller repeated that he did not think that Mauldin was insane at the time Ana was injured.
Fuller said Mauldin's wife and mother tried to have Mauldin involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital about 20 days before the incident in Galveston.
Attorney Sam Cammack III said Mauldin is mentally ill.
Cammack said Mauldin has been hearing voices since he was 10 and had psychosis, bipolar disorder, severe depression and schizophrenia that was never treated.
Officials said Mauldin was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft while he was in his teens. However, Mauldin stopped taking the medication a few weeks before Ana was injured.
Defense attorneys want jurors to believe Mauldin's videotaped confession to putting Ana in the microwave story was made up and that he may have accidentally spilled hot water on Ana.
Officials said the baby was completely dry when they found her. Doctors said that the baby's wounds appeared to be contact burns and not liquid burns.
Ana has undergone several surgeries and is living with relatives in Texas. She faces more surgeries and will probably have future medical problems, according to doctors.
If convicted of the felony charge, Mauldin faces a sentencing range from probation to life in prison.
Mauldin has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Copyright 2008 by Click2Houston.com.
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