Brazilian grandparents convicted in high-profile Texas kidnapping case

A federal jury in Texas on Friday found a Brazilian couple guilty of helping their daughter kidnap a Houston doctor's son and take him to Brazil, where the child remains, but declined to convict them of a related conspiracy charge. The split verdict came five years into Houston doctor Chris Brann's campaign to retrieve his son Nicolas, now 8, from Brazil, where his ex-wife Marcella Guimaraes took him for a temporary trip in July, 2013 and failed to return. Brann has said he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to get his son back, and has sought the help of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Hague Abduction Convention - a 1988 international agreement that seeks to facilitate the return of children removed in violation of custody agreements from their "habitual residences." In a separate statement issued after the split verdict, Brann said that "this is an incredibly sad day for me" and vowed to advocate for a lenient sentence for the grandparents if his son is immediately returned to the U.S.