In People v. Brown, the Supreme Court today overturns a mother’s conviction of first degree murder by poison of her five-day-old daughter. The mother had fed the baby breast milk after smoking heroin and methamphetamine. The reversal is because the jury wasn’t properly told about the mental state necessary to sustain the conviction.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Joshua Groban explains, “in a typical first degree murder by poison case there is no question that the defendant acted with willfulness, deliberation, and premeditation,” but the present case requires the court to specify for the first time that “the prosecution must show the defendant deliberately gave the victim poison with the intent to kill the victim or inflict injury likely to cause death.” The jury wasn’t instructed on that standard, an error the court finds prejudicial because the jury could have convicted the mother “even if it believed [she] fed her baby the breast milk with the intent to bond with her, nourish her, treat her illness, or soothe her.”
Today’s decision doesn’t exonerate the mother. Besides being subject to a potential retrial for first degree murder (with a properly instructed jury) or possibly a reduction of charges to second degree murder, she still stands convicted of child abuse with an enhancement for willful harm or injury resulting in the death of a child.
The court reverses the Third District Court of Appeal’s unpublished opinion.