Rejecting Danny Randell Lott’s defense that he was in a Xanax-induced

Rejecting Danny Randell Lott’s defense that he was in a Xanax-induced stupor when he pistol-whipped and restrained a woman in her South Austin home in 2008, state District Judge Karen Sage sentenced Lott to 35 years in prison today.

Sage called Lott, 49, “cruel and calculating” in doling out concurrent 35-year sentences for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery for his attack on Diana Martin in Travis Heights. She also sentenced him to 20 years for burglary of a habitation for breaking into Martin’s neighbor’s house to evade police. That sentence will also run concurrently.

Lott, who had pleaded guilty to the crimes and left his sentence to Sage, is already serving a nine-year sentence for receipt of child pornography.

Martin, 56, had testified that the attack upended her life and shattered her sense of security. After court adjourned, Martin and prosecutor Mary Farrington embraced in a long hug.

They had earlier explained in tearful testimony that the attack was completely out of character for Lott, who they said was a mild-mannered man who was dedicated to his family and who they had never known to have ever been in a fight.

He was a youth minister and youth sports coach for his son in Abilene before the child pornography charges surfaced in 2008, according to testimony. He had been prescribed Xanax to deal with the stress from those charges and stress from his declining shipping pallet business just days before he left his family and came to Austin, his wife testified. He told her he was going on a church retreat.

Martin said he showed up to her house on Alta Vista Drive at 1:30 p.m. as she planned for an open house the next day. Because he was so clean cut, she allowed him in and showed him around, she said.

After he began beating her with a pistol, he used duct tape and a zip tie he had brought with him to bind her hands and cover her mouth and told her to get on her bed, she said.

She was ultimately able to escape and ran to a neighbor’s for help. Lott was arrested the next month in Lewisville, where he had assumed the identity of a former employee and had planned plastic surgery to change his appearance.

“I believe the reason you did that is you knew exactly what you had done and you needed to become a new person,” Sage said upon pronouncing her sentence.

She told Lott she did not believe a story he gave to Jonathan Lipman, who studies the effects of medication on behavior and who testified for the defense. Lipman said that Lott, who did not testify, told him during an interview that he had gone to Austin to investigate starting a business and flipping houses when he become intoxicated at a party.

Lott told Lipman that he went into a hazy dream-like state and only remembers bits and pieces of his visit, such as sitting in his car and ending up in Lewisville.

Lipman said it is possible that Xanax and the stress Lott was under could have brought on the amnesia and intoxicated feeling that Lott described.

His defense was he was stressed out about his child porn charges? Seriously that is what he told the jury? Great advice from his lawyer. Yeh that will make the jury simpathetic.