A Miami woman currently in jail on murder charges won’t be released for the remainder of her pregnancy after a Florida appeals court called it “illogical” to argue that her unborn child was being illegally imprisoned.
Florida’s 3rd District Court of Appeals dismissed the fetus’ writ of habeas corpus, which can be used to determine if someone is unlawfully imprisoned, according to the Miami Herald.
Judge Monica Gordo wrote that the child in-utero is not logically considered to be held at a correctional facility simply because their mother is in custody, according to WTVJ, the local NBC affiliate in Miami.
“No more could the government be accused of unlawfully detaining the unborn child in this case than could the mother be guilty of kidnapping over interstate lines if she chose to visit her grandmother in Georgia while eight months pregnant. The argument is illogical,” Ms. Gordo wrote in her opinion.
The judge went on to say that “the mother comes to us as a badly disguised Trojan Horse. In fact, the argument is nothing more than an attempt for the mother to leverage her unborn child as a basis to be released from lawful detention.”
Attorney William M. Norris, who is representing the unborn child, told the Herald that the appellate court’s decision is a “punt” since this is uncharted territory for the law. The case can still be pursued in Florida’s Supreme Court or in a lower court.
The case is another legal challenge trying to hammer out the rights of unborn children following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer.
Inmate Natalia Harrell was arrested on a second-degree murder charge last July after police said she shot and killed another woman after they got into an argument. Ms. Harrell was six weeks pregnant at the time of the shooting.
