California's top prosecutor announced on Thursday, March 17, that one of their courts had overturned the 11-year prison term and conviction of a Central Valley woman for causing the death of her stillborn baby through drug use.
According to a report by the Associated Press, a judge in Kings County Superior Court reversed the conviction of Adora Perez on Wednesday. She pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter back in 2018 to avoid a charge of fetal murder.
Perez was ordered, however, to be sent from prison to the county jail pending a lower court hearing on April 6, where she can argue that the law was created with the intention of prosecuting people who cause stillbirth or miscarriage rather than the pregnant women themselves.
Attorney General Bonta applauds Court's landmark ruling
Kings County Executive Assistant District Attorney Philip Esbenshade issued a statement via an email on Thursday, saying they will review the Court's ruling and analysis in detail and decide on any further action they may take, including appeal.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta applauded the Court's decision, saying, "This decision is a good first step towards affirming what we know to be true; no woman should be penalized for the loss of her pregnancy." Bonta added that the bottom line of this decision is that pregnant individuals will be protected by the law and not criminalized by it.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Perez gave birth on December 31, 2017, to a full-term, stillborn baby at a Hanford hospital in the San Joaquin Valley. Perez acknowledged that she had used methamphetamine during her pregnancy. According to court documents, a doctor believed that her baby had died hours earlier because of her "extensive drug use."
Perez was charged with fetal murder and pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. Her plea was then upheld on appeal. The judge announced in Wednesday's ruling that the court should not have permitted the plea in the first place because the voluntary manslaughter law in California does not apply to the unborn child.
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Chrissakis ruled that Perez's plea bargain was illegal
In her ruling, Judge Valerie R. Chrissakis wrote that "there is no crime in California of manslaughter of a fetus." That being the case, Chrissakis ruled that Perez's plea bargain was illegal based upon a "factual or legal impossibility and/or non-existent crime."
According to the Los Angeles Times, Perez was one of two Kings County women charged with fetal murder on the grounds that their drug use was the reason behind the stillbirths. The first woman was charged with fetal murder in 2019, but a Kings County judge dismissed her case in May of last year.
The murder law in California was amended in 1970 to include the death of a fetus. Last January, Bonta issued a legal interpretation saying that the change was intended to criminalize violence done to pregnant women resulting in fetal death. Bonta said that intent was never to include a pregnant woman's own actions that might result in stillbirth or a miscarriage.
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