The Supreme Court proposes to partially pardon a woman who killed her newborn baby

According to the TS ruling, reported by Europa Press, the events date back to March 2020, when the woman, then 28 years old, realized that she was pregnant. ANDher fourth pregnancy. The previous three did not reach term, one due to a natural abortion and the remaining two due to voluntary abortions, one with drugs and the other surgical.

This new pregnancy surprised her in full confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic, “it is not possible, therefore, to undergo a medically assisted interruption.” At that juncture, she ingested an abortive substance, which did not work, so she continued with the pregnancy “hiding it from everyone” and without “medical control.”

Months later, in October 2020, she ingested the abortive substance again, which did not cause her abortion but rather brought her into labor earlier while she was working at the bar where she was a waitress. She asked for “five minutes” to be gone and, in “the bathrooms of an adjacent warehouse,” she gave birth to a child who was born alive. He tore the umbilical cord and, without tying it to prevent the baby from bleeding, He put it in a plastic bag, emptied it of air and closed it with a knot.

“Acting with the intention of hiding the birth and ending the life of the newborn,” he hid the bag in another one that he put in a cardboard box along with “bar products and garbage bags.”

He feared for his life and called the emergency services.

However, “scared by the abundant blood emanating from her vagina, and fearing for her life, she told a friend who was in the bar to call the emergency services.” “In a panic,” he called for an ambulance and, over the phone, when the doctor asked him what had happened, he said that He had burst “a lump” and had thrown out “a ball of hair”.

Once at the hospital, “despite the excuses of various kinds that she offered, denying that she had expelled anything other than blood, and her persistent refusal to have given birth, the doctor noticed that she had compatible, evident and unequivocal symptoms of childbirth.” », so he notified the National Police.

The woman “refused to collaborate by providing different addresses, because the Police suspected that the birth had occurred at her home, the accused acting knowing that time was crucial to finding the baby alive. He even wrote to his “friend” at the bar to clean the place. Finally, as the emergency call had been made from the establishment, the agents went there and found the body of the newborn.

The autopsy determined that the child died due to “several factors”: “hypothermia, asphyxiation due to suffocation and hemorrhage due to failure to ligate the umbilical cord.” According to the account of proven facts, “the creature at birth was unprotected, defenseless and without any possibility of surviving without the help of third parties.”

“She was not informed of her rights”

The Albacete Court sentenced the woman to 20 years and 1 day in prison for a crime of murder aggravated by kinship. Both the defense and the Prosecutor’s Office appealed but the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla-La Mancha only upheld the Public Ministry’s appeal to increase the sentence imposed and sentence her to permanent, reviewable prison.

The accused took the case to the Supreme Court, alleging that it had been proven that she suffered from “a substance use disorder”“the lack of intentionality” or “the concurrence of the extenuating circumstance of outburst.” She also argued that she was not alone at the time of birth and “the absence of traces or DNA remains” that linked her to the child.

Likewise, the defense maintained that there had been “a breach of inherent guarantees to his arrest, as well as his right to secrecy of communications.

Specifically, the defense argued that “the police officers involved knew about the commission of the crime from the moment they showed up at the hospital,” so they should have detained the woman as soon as they arrived, with all the guarantees that such status entails.

“However, noor the arrest was recorded and they were not informed of their rights as detained until after the body of the newborn child was found,” the Supreme Court stated.

The defense criticized that she was taken to the police station, which allowed “the agents to coerce her, saying that she was facing a crime of murder,” so that she would collaborate, “thus obtaining an interrogation without legal assistance and for the suspect to unlock her phone to review its contents.

He had to ensure his “own survival”

The Supreme agrees with the defense on this point considering that “when she was discharged in the middle of the night, not out of appreciation of medical convenience, but because of the patient’s desire to leave the hospital, it is not acceptable that her being taken to the police station derived from consent.” free and, even less, that the police action allowed her to evade the guarantees she had as a detainee.

«And due to these same factual circumstances, it is evident that the invitation to accompany the agents to the police station was expressed in a context of authority and submission of the person under investigation, without the absence of resistance being able to be evaluated as a free and voluntary appearance, nor can serve as a mechanism to deactivate the status of defensive guarantees that should have been recognized,” adds the high court.

Nevertheless, rejects that the conviction is based on the evidence obtained from the mobile phone at that time, estimating that “there are evidentiary sources independent of the illegitimate source that, by themselves, lead to the same conclusion.”

Despite the criticism, the Supreme Court understands that the actions of the police “were probably oriented towards the exclusive efforts of locating and eventual rescue or protection of the newborn.”

So things are, dismisses the woman’s appeal in its entirety, but he appreciates that the murder was committed “in extreme circumstances that conditioned the evaluation of his actions.”

Specifically, the Supreme Court details that “her behavior developed immediately after going through the pain of childbirth, lacking any assistance and in a context in which his new criminal determination was simultaneous with the desire to hide his responsibility, as well as the need to attend to his own survival.

For this reason, the Second Chamber, in a presentation by Judge Pablo Llarena, maintains that “these circumstances” are “noticeably distant from those that normally surround the conduct contemplated in article 140.1.1 of the Penal Code.

This provision establishes that “murder will be punished with a permanent prison sentence that can be reviewed when (…) the victim is under 16 years of age, or is a particularly vulnerable person due to his or her age, illness or disability.”

However, the Supreme Court asks a partial pardon of the permanent prison sentence that can be reviewedconcluding that a sentence that exceeds that resulting from the combination between the crimes of attempted abortion and reckless homicide but does not exceed 20 years and 1 day “may be equitably appropriate to the alleged defendant.”