California mother’s conviction for fetal death overturned

Perez gave birth to a full-term, stillborn baby on Dec. 31, 2017, at a hospital in Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley. Perez acknowledged that she had used methamphetamine during the pregnancy, and a doctor believed that the baby had died hours earlier from “extensive drug use” by the mother, according to court documents.

She was charged with fetal murder and pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and the plea was upheld on appeal. The judge in Wednesday’s ruling said that the court shouldn’t have permitted the plea because California’s voluntary manslaughter law doesn’t apply to the unborn.

“There is no crime in California of manslaughter of a fetus,” Judge Valerie R. Chrissakis wrote.

That means the woman’s plea bargain was illegal “based upon a factual or legal impossibility and/or non-existent crime,” the ruling said.

Perez was one of two women charged with fetal murder in Kings County on grounds that their drug use led to stillbirths. The first woman was charged in 2019, but a Kings County judge dismissed the case last May.

California’s murder law was amended in 1970 to include the death of a fetus. In January, Bonta issued a legal interpretation that said the change was intended to criminalize violence done to pregnant women that caused fetal death. The intent, he said, was never to include a woman’s own actions that might result in a miscarriage or stillbirth.