Jury selected in Sarah Hartsfield murder trial

ANAHUAC, Texas - A murder trial begins this week for a Texas woman accused of killing her husband in 2023.

Jury selected

FOX 26 has learned a jury has been selected in the trial of Sarah Jean Hartsfield, who is charged in the death of Joseph Hartsfield.

The 12 person jury will consist of eight men and four women, along with two alternates, who are a man and a woman. 

Sarah Hartsfield charged with murder

The backstory:

Joseph Hartsfield died in January 2023. He was Sarah Jean Hartsfield’s fifth husband.

The Chambers County Sheriff’s Office says they were called to a Baytown hospital on the evening of Jan. 7, 2023, about the suspicious illness of an emergency room patient – Joseph. He had been brought in by ambulance from Beach City, where he lived.

According to the sheriff’s office, inconsistencies and other factors discovered during the investigation "made the illness appear more suspicious in nature."

Joseph later died. The sheriff’s office said they believed his death was the result of "foul play."

The district attorney was contacted, and the case was later presented to a grand jury. On Feb. 3, 2023, the grand jury indicted Sarah on a felony murder charge.

According to the sheriff’s office, Joseph was diabetic, and they believe his insulin level was suspiciously high hours before his death and before Sarah called 911.

Sarah pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. She has remained in jail for the two-and-a-half years since she was charged.

What they're saying:

"This is one of the more interesting cases in particular because it has a lot of medical aspects to it. It’s a very technical case, has taken creativity and ingenuity on the detectives and deputies to put this murder together," Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said.

Local perspective:

Beach City, Texas, is located to the east of Houston, near the Trinity Bay.

What can be brought up in trial?

The big question is whether prosecutors can bring up her past — including four of her former partners who reportedly either died, were injured or accused her of violence.

She has never been convicted of a crime, but the case here in Texas has prompted prosecutors in Minnesota to reopen a 2018 case, in which Sarah shot and killed her fiancé, that was ruled self-defense.

Prosecutors have dozens of witnesses and additional allegations ranging from child abuse to arson to even a murder plot in which she allegedly tried to get her ex-husband to kill her other ex’s wife. 

The judge is supposed to decide if her past can be brought up in this trial.

What they're saying:

"She's not that kind, sleepy little person she makes herself out to be. You can look at her overall history. You can tell there’s a very evil side to her," Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said.

"It's very fortunate for us the way we have treated this case, and then we started to look at her history and finding out some of the other scenarios and situations that she has been involved with in other states now that we have other cases that have been reopened in other states. I'm glad they have reopened those cases because I feel like they are going to find very same, similar scenario as to what we have," Sheriff Hawthorne said.

Sarah Hartsfield's former partner's death

Dig deeper:

Following Sarah’s indictment in 2023, the Douglas County Attorney in Minnesota confirmed that the investigation into a previous death involving Sarah was active again as they followed up on new information the sheriff’s office had received. However, no charges have come from that investigation.

FOX 9 reported that in 2019 the Douglas County Attorney's Office decided not to move forward with charges against Sarah Donohue – now Sarah Hartsfield – after she shot and killed her then-fiancé David Bragg inside a home in Garfield, Minn., in 2018.

According to FOX 9, deputies responded to a home in Garfield on May 9, 2018, for a report of a domestic disturbance during which shots were fired.

At the scene, they found Bragg dead inside the home. According to a letter from the Douglas County Attorney in 2019, Sarah had claimed that Bragg had assaulted her and fired shots at her on a staircase, and she responded by shooting at him, killing him.

At the time, prosecutors said that evidence at the home seemed to support Sarah's version of events.

"The facts reveal that Mr. Bragg discharged his firearm at Ms. Donohue from a close proximity while the two were engaged in an altercation that had become physical," wrote Douglas County Attorney Chad Larson in 2019. "Under the circumstances, Ms. Donohue was justified in shooting Mr. Bragg as a matter of self-defense as she was facing lethal force and had no reasonable possibility of retreating from the threat. Therefore, I am declining to file criminal charges against Ms. Donohue in relation to Mr. Bragg's death."