Woman sentenced 20 years when premature baby dies

[Dylan]

True.

[Professor]

[uebermann]

Apparently Dylan has never met a compulsive liar. I know a few if you'd like to receive text messages about things they are "doing."

So its funny that we assume she is lying about the events that took place, yet we'll assume that everything she said in her texts are true. Sounds like cherry picking to me but I'm not a lawyer so who knows.

[Dylan]

Well at trial she had a reason to lie - i.e., to avoid suffering the consequences of her actions. What reason did she have to lie beforehand?

So, to be clear, you think that she:

(1) Lied about wanting to terminate the pregnancy;
(2) Lied about ordering the pills;
(3) Fabricated email confirmation of ordering said pills;
(4) Lied about consuming the pills;
(5) Lied about the taste of the pills on consumption; and
(6) Then spontaneously had a totally natural miscarriage shortly after lying about taking the pills.

Is this your new "compulsive liar" argument?

[uebermann]

Does it matter what I think or does it matter what can be proven?

Do I think there was some shady shit going on? Sure. But the thing is, given that she was having an affair with a married man and hiding her pregnancy from her ultra religious parents, I wouldn't put anything past her. I know people that have lived in extremely religious families like that and they lied about shit all the time. Just random stupid shit. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to hear she actually wanted to keep the baby and was just lying to her friend about it all for attention.

At any rate

(1) Lots of women think or talk about terminating a pregnancy. Or at the very least of not wanting the baby.
(2) She may have ordered them. Ordering the pills is not illegal
(3) Possible but not probable.
(4) Yes, she could have lied. (Attention)
(5) Yes, she could have lied. (Attention)
(6) The stress alone from the situation could account for a miscarriage.

No financial proof she ordered the pills - they can't tie the purchase to her other than the email. Seems odd.

Also seems odd that someone would send text messages to a friend while committing a knowingly illegal action. If you were breaking the law and new you were breaking the law, why on Earth would you text it and then leave those texts on your phone?

You're also completely ignoring the use of the feticide law outside of its original attended scope, as well as the fact that we have a non-Christian, non-white, out-of-wedlock pregnant woman in a predominately white, Christian, conservative state. The police made sure to keep bringing her race and the race of the father up while questioning her, they never even tried to hide their goal in all of this.

[Dylan]

[uebermann]

I'm emotionally invested in it? Can you explain that one to me? I don't know her, I haven't been in her situation. I just think if our court systems are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, when she was guilty before she ever got to the court, that the case is a sham. Which is why I called it a witch hunt. I honestly don't think there even needed to be a court case for this, to be perfectly honest. All that jury needed to hear was "non-White, non-Christian, unmarried woman wanted to abort her baby" and they'd all likely convict her of being guilty of whatever she did.

Feticide laws were originally designed to protect women. Example: So if a guy found out his girl was preggers, he wouldn't punch her in the gut to cause a miscarriage then just get off with a assault/battery charge on the woman if the fetus didn't survive. Its just another way for pro-life people to punish sluts and try to ban abortions.

[Dylan]

[uebermann]

[uebermann]

Here's a good NYT article about all of this. It brings up a few things I hadn't seen before actually - notably that the drugs she allegedly ordered were illegal to order online - but goes into full details about everything and how even the pathologist for the prosecution admits the lung test used is unreliable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/magaz ... .html?_r=0