Attorney gets 180 days in jail for drugging wife to abort unborn daughter
Mason Herring, a Texas attorney who secretly laced his pregnant wife’s drinks multiple times in a failed attempt to abort their unborn daughter, was sentenced to 180 days in jail and another 10 years on probation for his crimes.
The Houston attorney, 39, was initially charged with felony assault to induce abortion, but he pleaded guilty a week ago to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person.
Although he failed to kill his daughter, his wife, Catherine Herring, who has filed for divorce, says the attack on her pregnancy resulted in the couple’s 1-year-old daughter being born prematurely. She says the daughter is afflicted with multiple developmental delays, which require frequent therapy sessions, according to KXAS-TV.
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Court records cited by The New York Times show Judge Andrea Beall of Harris County District Court ordered the attorney to start serving his sentence on March 1, but his soon-to-be ex-wife doesn’t believe the punishment he received is sufficient.
“I do not believe that 180 days is justice for attempting to kill your child seven separate times,” Catherine Herring told the court, KXAS reports.
“I believe this was a flagrant and profound injustice,” she added, according to The Times. She called her husband’s actions “a wicked act of deception.”
In her criminal complaint, Catherine Herring said in March 2022, while they were on vacation for five days with their two older children in West Texas, her husband told her she needed to drink more water to stay hydrated. She said he gave her drinks with an unknown substance several times.
When they returned to Houston from their trip, Catherine Herring said on March 17, her husband brought her breakfast with a cup of water, and he would do this routinely in the morning even though they had stopped living together because he had asked for a separation.
“It felt really weird because he was simultaneously asking for a separation,” she said in the complaint, “I was already thinking, ‘Why are you here?’”
She said on March 17, her husband was insistent again that she drink more water and wouldn’t leave until she drank it all. She explained, however, that while drinking the water, she noticed it looked cloudy.
“I stopped when I felt like he was acting weird,” she said. “He was telling me, ‘Chug it. Finish your drink.’”
About 30 minutes after she drank the water, she said she began having cramps, diarrhea, bleeding and general feelings of an illness. She was rushed to the emergency room where she continued to bleed.
When she returned home the following day, her husband continued bringing her drinks. She finally learned on April 24, 2022, that her husband was giving her Cyrux.
Cyrux, according to Generic Drugs, is usually taken “to prevent stomach ulcers in patients taking anti-inflammatory drugs, including aspirin,” but it may also be used to abort a pregnancy in the first and second trimesters. It can also be used to induce labor.
“That was a huge relief to finally find out what it was,” Catherine Herring said.
The attorney’s wife said she “absolutely” believes that her husband’s attempts on her daughter’s life are what led to her being born prematurely and being hospitalized for 117 days after her birth.
She filed for divorce in May 2022, Harris County court records show.
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