Candice Nicole Boles entered a plea of guilty of cruelty to children in the first degree, a felony, and guilty of cruelty to children in the second degree, admitting she played a role in the death of her daughter Andraia Boles, who was 3 at the time of her murder in February 2013.

Boles, represented by her attorney Stephen Yekel, presented her plea to Liberty County Superior Court Judge Paul Rose in the Liberty County Justice Center this afternoon.

Liberty County Sheriff’s Office Detective Doug Snider, who was a Hinesville Police detective during the murder investigation and trial of co-defendant Torres Boles, testified that Candice Boles was aware of the injuries her husband had done to the child, yet did nothing to stop the beating nor render aid.

Torres Boles was sentenced to life in prison without parole after he was found guilty of the crime back in September 2014.

The trial outlined the story of the girl kept locked in the bathroom for hours every day over several months. The night before the girl was found unresponsive, her father reprimanded her for stuffing a toilet with tissue and flooding a substantial portion of the house. The punishment was a severe beating from Torres Boles which resulted in the girl’s death.

On the stand Monday, Snider said Candice Boles had confessed to HPD Detective Tracey Howard that she had seen her daughter’s forehead and eyes swollen.

“There was a massive amount of trauma,” Snider testified.

He said Boles told Howard, during their police interview, that she helped her husband clean up the flooded carpet by placing towels on the floor and stepping on them to soak up the water. She then handed the soaked towel to her husband who wrung out the towel over the then still conscious, yet already injured girl.

Candice Boles then left the bathroom, went to play video games, ate a snack and went to bed. She woke up the next day around 6 a.m. and later discovered her daughter, unresponsive in the bath tub. Snider said Boles then called her husband to come home instead of calling 9-1-1.

Snider said Boles had admitted that she and her husband sometimes got into heated arguments but that he never physically abused her.

Boles, 29, addressed Rose as she entered her guilty pleas, adding that she is currently on two different anti-depressants. She said she understood her constitutional rights and wanted to enter her pleas instead of facing a jury trial that was set to start in July.

Rose explained that it was an open-ended plea, meaning the state and her attorney had not settled on the sentence.

Atlantic Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney Melissa Poole said the sentence for cruelty to children in the first degree ranges from one to 20 years and for the other charge the sentencing range was between one to 10 years.

Rose granted Boles a pre-sentencing investigation and said Boles would be sentenced in 60-90 days.