She was sentenced to over a decade in prison for delivering a stillborn child.
Soon, she might walk free again.
It’s been four years since Adora Perez, 34, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter at a Kings County courthouse in June 2018. As a result, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
On Dec. 31, 2017, Perez delivered a stillborn baby at a hospital in San Joaquin Valley. Later, an autopsy report showed the baby died due to excessive drug usage by the defendant. In addition, the defendant also confessed to investigators she had been using methamphetamine during her pregnancy.
However, a Kings County Superior Court Judge, Valerie Chrissakis, vacated Perez’s conviction based on the premise that the charges and plea agreement were unlawful.
Legal Conundrum
The defendant’s conviction stemmed from the 1970 California Supreme Court ruling which overturned the conviction of a man who had assaulted his pregnant wife, thereby killing the baby in her womb. As a result, the state legislature passed a law that would allow perpetrators of such cases to be prosecuted for murder a fetus. Perez’s case will continue to be a contentious issue that will eventually be argued in the United States Supreme Court in the nearest future.
Hence, the defendant’s addiction and excessive drug use causing the death of Perez’s baby fell within the parameters of the aforesaid law. However, the law was not specific or exempt mothers from bringing harm to their own fetus.
Over the years, the defendant had acquired the services of both private and court-appointed lawyers in a bid to appeal her sentence but continued to meet resistance and judicial denials. Then another defendant, Chelsea Becker, 26, whose case bore distinct similarities with Perez, was arrested and charged for murder in 2019. However, her case was dismissed because prosecutors had failed to produce any evidence suggesting Becker’s intention and knowledge of ingesting methamphetamine to induce death to her fetus.
“It is the opinion of our office that sufficient evidence was presented at the preliminary hearing to hold Ms. Becker to answer for trial. The judge who presided over that preliminary examination, upon hearing that evidence and considering arguments from both sides, did find such sufficient evidence existed. Judge Burns, the judge who dismissed the case this morning, apparently disagrees with that finding,” said Kings County Executive Assistant District Attorney Philip Esbenshade, according to New York Times.
Both women appeared before Kings County Superior Court Judge Robert Shane Burns. They were both natives of Hanford, California.
Genesis
The mother of eight had struggled with drug addiction for years. Family members attributed some of her failures and setbacks to her children’s father and boyfriend. Seven of her children were born with a high dosage of methamphetamine. Due to her lengthy record of drug abuse, hospital officials did not hesitate to call child protective services. Perez’s case never garnered much media attention compared to Becker. However, after her conviction, the defendant’s case piqued the interest of abortion and reproductive rights advocates who argued the illegality of the Perez’s conviction and sentence.
“With the possibility that Roe (v. Wade) might fall this year, letting this stand could increase these types of prosecutions. Those cases happen everywhere in the country. I would just emphasize that I felt that shock when I heard these cases happened in California,” said National Advocates for Pregnant Women Staff Attorney Samantha Lee, reported Call Matters.
The California Attorney General Rob Bonta also applauded the decision to vacate Perez’s conviction.
Long Road Ahead
Despite the conviction being vacated, prosecutors have charged Perez again for murder. She is slated to face a new trial in a couple of weeks when she will get another chance to argue that drug addiction and stillbirths are not elements of the 1970 statutory law for the murder of a fetus.
The defendant was ordered to be moved to Kings County jail, and her trial slated for April 6.
