California’s top prosecutor has intervened in the case of a Central Valley woman who was charged with murder after she gave birth to a stillborn baby and authorities alleged her methamphetamine use was to blame.
Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on Friday filed an amicus brief in support of ending the prosecution of Chelsea Becker, saying his office believes “the law was misapplied and misinterpreted.”
“We will work to end the prosecution and imprisonment of Ms. Becker so we can focus on applying this law to those who put the lives of pregnant women in danger,” Becerra said in a statement.
Becker, 26, has been confined to the Kings County Jail since her arrest in November, with bail currently set at $2 million. Her attorneys have asked California’s 5th District Court of Appeals to prohibit the lower court from proceeding with the case, arguing that California’s murder law was never intended to be used against women in connection with the deaths of their own unborn children.
Kings County Dist. Atty. Keith Fagundes has maintained the murder law supports the charge, pointing to a 1970 amendment that added a fetus as a potential victim. A Kings County Superior Court judge sided with his office in June, denying an application by Becker’s lawyers to dismiss the case.
But in the brief, Becerra argues that Fagundes misinterpreted the law’s intent in filing the charge, and the Superior Court erred in declining to dismiss it.
“Section 187 of the California Penal Code was intended to protect pregnant women from harm, not charge them with murder,” Becerra said. “Our laws in California do not convict women who suffer the loss of their pregnancy, and in our filing today we are making clear that this law has been misused to the detriment of women, children and families.”
The filing does not have an immediate impact on whether the prosecution will go forward. But it is a powerful statement of support from the state’s top lawyer as the appeals court weighs whether to dismiss the case.
“The attorney general of California is the highest legal officer in the executive branch of the state government,” said Daniel Arshack, special counsel to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who is representing Becker. “That they felt compelled to alert the court that the Kings County judiciary has misapplied state law is something that the court will not ignore.”
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women began assisting with Becker’s defense in December, shortly after her arrest. Her case also gained the support of medical and civil rights organizations, with 15 groups — including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry — signing onto a brief in support of the application to dismiss the case. The American Civil Liberties Union also filed a brief.
If the charge is dismissed, advocates hope the ruling will also bolster the case to free Adora Perez, 32, who is two years into an 11-year sentence at the state prison in Chowchilla.
The facts in Perez’s case are nearly identical to Becker’s: Fagundes charged the Hanford woman with murder in 2018 after she gave birth to a stillborn baby at the same hospital where Becker delivered her stillborn child. Staff called the coroner’s office in both instances. Perez was assigned the same public defender as Becker and appeared before the same judge.
But her counsel didn’t challenge the legality of the proceedings, and Perez took a plea agreement, pleading no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter.
The case marked the first time in nearly 30 years a California woman was charged with the murder of her unborn child. Perhaps more troubling, advocates say, is that it was the first time in the state’s history that such a charge resulted in jail time. Several other attempts to prosecute women for murder for stillbirths in the 1990s were dismissed.
“Every single other judge in California has recognized that you don’t prosecute a woman for having a stillbirth,” Arshack said. “Only Kings County, twice in the last two years, has decided to criminalize women who have stillbirths.”
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August 08, 2020 at 02:48AM
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Attorney general denounces murder charge over stillborn baby - Los Angeles Times
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