Montgomery, Alaa.. A judge has ordered a new trial for an Alabama woman who was sentenced to 18 years in prison after a stillbirth, which her lawyers said was caused by an infection, not drug use.
Lee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Tikal overturned Brock Shoemaker’s 2020 conviction for chemical endangerment of a child resulting in death. The new information, if accepted by jurors, “confers acquittal of the crime,” the judge wrote in a Dec. 22 ruling ordering another trial. The prosecution is appealing the decision.
Shoemaker is one of at least dozens of women who have been prosecuted after a pregnancy loss and one of hundreds who have been prosecuted for abortion. Pregnancy-related behaviouraccording to Pregnancy Justice, an advocacy organization helping with her appeal. The 18-year prison sentence against her is considered one of the longest sentences in such cases, according to the organization.
In 2017, Shoemaker was stillborn at approximately 24 to 26 weeks of pregnancy. She admitted to the medical staff that she had used methamphetamine during her pregnancy.
The state medical examiner found methamphetamine present in the fetus’s bloodstream but stated the cause of death was undetermined.
Shoemaker’s lawyers said there was no evidence that drug use caused the pregnancy loss. In her appeal, her lawyers presented an expert opinion, based on a review of pathology slides, that a genetic defect and a serious infection caused the pregnancy to be miscarried.
Karen Thompson, legal director of Pregnancy Justice, welcomed the decision, saying there was no factual basis at all for the charges against Shoemaker.
“The judge really recognized the validity of the science,” Thompson said in a phone interview. “And one of the problems we see in these types of cases across the country is there is no desire or need to prove any harm.”
In a statement issued by Pregnancy Justice, Shoemaker said she hopes to be home with her children and parents next year.
“I hope my new trial ends with me being released, because I simply lost my pregnancy at home due to an infection. I loved and wanted my baby, and I never deserved that,” Shoemaker said.
Prosecutors are appealing the decision to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. They said Shoemaker did not present new evidence but “only found a new expert willing to reinterpret the evidence that was available prior to trial.” He was Attorney General in 2020 He praised the conviction As “justice for this child.”
Alabama leads the nation in pregnancy-related prosecutions, with most cases involving drug use, according to a pregnancy judge.
Alabama’s chemical threat law was initially approved by lawmakers as a way to address harm to children from methamphetamine labs, but it has also been used to prosecute pregnant women. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld this interpretation in 2013, writing that the word child in the law includes “an unborn child.”