Analogy by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters

The 29-yr-old woman was rushed to a Central Valley infirmary on Dec. 30, 2017. Vii of her nine children had been born high on methamphetamine. This one, her 10th, was coming two weeks early.

Doctors detected no fetal heartbeat at 9:xxx p.thou. At 10:xiv p.k., she tested positive for methamphetamine. Eight minutes afterwards, Adora Perez of Hanford delivered a stillborn boy she named Hades, according to medical records shared with CalMatters past a member of Perez's legal team.

"Affect appropriate for situation," her medical chart noted. "Teary off and on."

And then — on the forenoon of January. i, 2018 — Perez was released from Adventist Medical Center in Hanford and arrested. Charged with murder, she eventually pleaded guilty to "manslaughter of a fetus" and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Perez has served nearly four years of her sentence, but this week, she returns to court. On Tuesday, a Kings County estimate will weigh whether to reopen the case. Perez's attorneys contend that she didn't understand the offense to which she was pleading and received ineffective counsel from her trial and appellate attorneys.

Since her guilty plea, Perez's story has drawn national attending for her rare plea to manslaughter of a fetus – a charge that doesn't exist in California law. Abortion rights advocates believe her case has broad implications for abortion access in California, potentially opening the door to criminal prosecutions of people seeking to terminate pregnancies.

"With the possibility that Roe (v. Wade) might fall this year, ​​letting this stand could increase these types of prosecutions," said Samantha Lee, staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "Those cases happen everywhere in the country.

"I would just emphasize that I felt that shock when I heard these cases happened in California."

A booking photograph of Adora Perez from the Kings County Sheriff'south Office.

The four-year-old case also has pitted California's attorney general against a long-fourth dimension rural prosecutor.

In Jan, with Perez's new court date looming in Kings County, Attorney General Rob Bonta issued an admonition to prosecutors statewide: Don't file charges confronting mothers who expel or deliver a stillbirth.

"In California, we practice non criminalize pregnancy loss, we do non criminalize miscarriages, we do not criminalize stillbirths," Bonta, appointed last March, said in a press conference.

Bonta described his guidance as a "legal alert" to every county prosecutor.

Across the entire land in the final three decades, only one prosecutor has charged women who miscarry with murder: Kings County District Attorney Keith Fagundes.

Twenty-2 months after he charged Perez, Fagundes filed a murder charge against 26-twelvemonth-old Chelsea Becker of Hanford, who too tested positive for methamphetamine and delivered a stillbirth at the same hospital.

Becker was released in March after xvi months in jail. A Kings County guess dismissed the murder charge against her in May.

A booking photo of Chelsea Becker from the Kings County Sheriff's Office.

Perez's legal team takes that every bit a good sign — even knowing that they have challenged the conduct of the local prosecutors, defence attorneys, trial court and law enforcement system that airtight quickly around Perez on the night of her delivery.

They say they're also encouraged by a June 2021 determination by a state appellate court, which ruled that a trial courtroom cannot have a defendant's plea that isn't based in fact – exactly what Perez's pro bono chaser, Mary McNamara, argues is happening in Kings County.

"You tin can't only plead to something you couldn't have done," McNamara said.

The New year's day's arrest

In the hospital, according to her nursing chart, Perez and the male parent of her babe were distraught.

Perez "was emotional, bawling and mixed emotions," a nurse wrote. "(Begetter of the baby) appeared to accept been crying and was solemn."

Perez was given numbers to call for substance abuse and counseling for postpartum depression. Both parents were handed a brochure almost grief and loss called Angel Babies.

"Pt anticipates d/c home," a nurse wrote in hospital shorthand: Patient anticipates discharge to home.

In his discharge summary, Dr. Thomas Enloe recommended that Perez be put on one to two weeks of "pelvic rest," and recommended a follow-up appointment.

But the hospital had already put Perez'south legal case into motility. At eleven:30 p.1000. on Dec. 30, 2017, a nurse at the infirmary chosen Kid Protective Services. Constabulary were at Perez'southward bedside within three hours and 10 minutes of her delivery.

"Adventist (Medical Center) was taking a very proactive part in contacting law enforcement," McNamara said.

A doctor told a detective that the baby died of a placental abruption "due to extensive drug use by the mother," according to Perez'south medical records, a statement which formed the foundation of the case against her.

"I would just emphasize that I felt that stupor when I heard these cases happened in California."

Samantha Lee, National Advocates for Pregnant Women

After she was charged, Perez was assigned an attorney who worked on a contract footing – Kings County, population 153,000, doesn't have a public defender's office. Perez argues now that the attorney failed to provide her with effective assist, and led her to plead to a charge she didn't understand.

She attempted to withdraw the plea, and argued her first chaser didn't investigate the possibility that something other than methamphetamine might have led to the stillbirth. The judge denied her motion to withdraw the plea and, on June 15, 2018, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison house.

Perez appealed, just her appellate attorney filed what's chosen a Wende cursory, which tells the appeals court that the attorney found no issue upon which to appeal the case.

"It was basically putting upward the white flag," McNamara said.

The appellate court upheld the lower court'due south ruling. The California Supreme Court declined to hear her petition for review.

Perez is now request the Kings County Superior Court to reopen her case.

District attorney defiant

The tallest building in Hanford is the courthouse, four stories of neo-classical revival in the seat of Kings County. It's about as old as the county itself, congenital just three years after the county'due south incorporation in 1893.

The history of the state is inscribed in this rural county'due south history: Bloodied past 1880s gun battles between railroad bulls and squatters, it was briefly made rich by a 1928 oil strike and provided the backdrop for the 1933 cotton fiber pickers' protest.

But there, Kings County'southward history begins to diverge from California'south more recent prosperity.

The ​​oil strike uncovered the Kettleman N Dome Oil Field, but the site is nearly exhausted. More people are leaving here than arriving – the county has lost more than than 2,800 residents to out-migration in the final five years, according to the California Department of Finance. An estimated 2,000 births each year is the only thing keeping the county's full population from shrinking.

A significant number of the adult population has voted for Fagundes.

In the last decade, Fagundes, the district attorney, has enjoyed a healthy mandate. Later a 12-yr career as a deputy district attorney in Tulare and Kings counties, he won the race for Kings Canton District Attorney in 2014 and 2018 with more than than 68% of the vote, and he'southward running for reelection this year.

When Bonta held his Jan. 6 press conference on the Becker and Perez cases, joined by abortion rights groups, a representative of Planned Parenthood decried "rogue district attorneys."

Fagundes was listening.

"The AG of the land has no business organisation beingness asked by political groups to requite such statements," Fagundes said.

"He took an oath to uphold the police force and enforce the constabulary, not translate it for his own political ways."

Fagundes' neatly combed hair and ready grinning belie a puncher'due south mentality. Raised in a working class Cosmic family of seven, Fagundes said ballgame was never a topic his family discussed. His father, Richard Fagundes, has been on the Kings County Lath of Supervisors since 2008.

"Through the higher years and I even so maintain today, I don't accept a uterus. I'm not going to make decisions for women in that regard," Fagundes said. "I'm not going to tell them what's best for their babe or themselves."

A Democrat for much of his life, Fagundes switched to the Republican Party in 2014 as he prepared to run for office in this heavily Republican county, where 64% of registered voters wanted to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom in September.

Just the decisions to charge the mothers, he said, came non from his ain political leanings just from the opinions of the doctors who treated them and the pathologists who examined the fetuses.

"It's like, look, under what circumstances tin can we do something?" Fagundes said. "These women are coming in and they are high on drugs.

"If they had come in beaten up and their fetuses were suffering from being beaten up, we would be charging the fathers. Why aren't we charging folks for this?"

The staredown with state AGs

In about every example, the California chaser full general's part supports the piece of work of county district attorneys.

The Perez and Becker cases take reversed that dynamic.

Bonta and his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, now the U.S. Health and Human being Services secretarial assistant, accept consistently called for the women to exist freed.

"I recall our position is very articulate," Bonta told CalMatters. Trial courts and attorneys "should know there's no legal continuing for such a accuse," he said.

Becerra said in a 2020 friend of the courtroom brief that Fagundes misinterpreted the constabulary and that a Kings County Superior Courtroom judge was incorrect in deciding not to dismiss the charge against her.

More recently, Bonta filed a petition to the state Supreme Court, asking the justices to review Perez's case. His office has besides joined coalitions of land attorneys full general opposing restrictions to abortion access in Texas, Mississippi, Arizona and Indiana.

Attorney General Rob Bonta, seen here on Jan. vi, 2020, as an assemblymember from Alameda. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters

California law regarding deaths of a fetus dates back to 1970. A human being was convicted of murder for severely beating his estranged meaning wife, who lost her baby. His conviction was overturned past the California Supreme Court, which ruled that a fetus is non a man nether the law.

In response, the Legislature added language to California's murder statute: The killing of a fetus was punishable. Merely they added a condition: The murder statute didn't utilise if the act was "solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus."

Perez's attorneys argue that her charges are therefore invalid because, under California police, a fetus cannot be the victim of a criminal act if the act is committed by the mother, or with her consent. They say the prosecutor erred in charging Perez, and the judge wrongfully immune Perez to plead to something legally impossible. They argue the original attorney assigned to Perez failed her by allowing her to plead to a lesser charge, manslaughter of a fetus, that doesn't exist in California law.

"Ms. Perez pled guilty (to manslaughter) because she had been led to believe that she could be bedevilled of murder, which was not true," her attorneys wrote in a brief asking the country Supreme Court to review the case.

Medical experts introduced past Perez'south new legal team also take testified that at that place is no scientific discipline supporting the thought that methamphetamine causes stillbirths.

Tuesday'south hearing will have up the question of whether Perez was denied her constitutional rights to due process by the deportment and inaction of her original attorneys. If a judge agrees with Perez, her manslaughter plea will be vacated, and she could be released on bond. She would yet face the original charge of murder.

Fagundes believes he'southward done the all-time matter possible for the residents of his county, including Becker and Perez.

"This may exist way out of line to say, simply I credit our practice to (Becker's) recovery if she stays recovered," Fagundes said.

He argues that jail for Becker – and prison house for Perez – provided them their longest periods of sobriety.

"How practise yous disagree that our practice worked for her in this moment? Yous tin't. No other practice helped her."

The mothers today

Today, Perez is inmate number WG0595 at the Key California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. Since she'south in prison house for killing her baby, McNamara said she'due south been assaulted.

"When you go into a prison with the moniker 'infant killer,' it's similar to a human being going to prison house for pedophilia," McNamara said. "Yous're marked. She'southward been beaten upwardly, she's been ostracized, she'due south been in and out of the mental health ward."

Drugs are readily bachelor in the women'due south prison, McNamara said, though she declined to say whether Perez, at present 34, has maintained her sobriety during her incarceration.

"Prisons are filled with drugs, and to be able to survive in a state of affairs like that every bit a sober individual is extraordinarily hard," McNamara said.

Becker, the other woman charged with manslaughter of a fetus, declined to comment through her chaser, Dan Arshack.

"(Becker) is a brilliant young woman with a troubled past and a brilliant future," Arshack said. "Even though she didn't know what the police was, in her middle she knew she shouldn't accept been criminalized."

Arshack said Becker, at present 27, is working full time and taking college courses. When she graduates, he said, she plans to apply to law school.

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