Judge Rejects Drug Case Tied to Pregnancy

A judge has dismissed a drug delivery charge against a woman accused of passing cocaine to her newborn baby by ingesting the drug while pregnant, saying lawmakers did not intend the law to be used that way.

The judge also said the case violated the woman’s rights to privacy and due process.

The prosecutor in the case said he would appeal.

In an opinion filed Monday, Eaton County Circuit Judge Thomas Eveland said in throwing out the felony charge against Lynn Bremer that the Legislature did not intend Michigan’s drug delivery law to apply to pregnant women who take controlled substances.

“No reasonable person would anticipate that the statute prohibited the behavior prosecuted here,” Eveland wrote. He was appointed special judge in the case after local judges disqualified themselves because of their professional association with Bremer, a Muskegon lawyer.

Bremer, 36, was charged last spring after traces of a cocaine derivative were found in her newborn daughter’s urine. The doctor ordered the test after Bremer confided during her pregnancy that she was unable to stop using cocaine. Reporting of the finding of cocaine in the newborn was mandatory under state law.

She admitted using cocaine throughout her pregnancy, as recently as about 40 hours before giving birth. She since has completed a drug rehabilitation program.