Pregnant Woman Sent to Jail Days Before Due Date : Courts: The judge refuses to delay her drunk-driving sentence, saying the time for penance has come.

A pregnant 30-year-old Vista woman, who pleaded guilty to causing an injury while driving drunk 14 months ago, began a year’s jail sentence this week--even though her baby is due Sunday.

Both the San Diego County Probation Department and her defense attorney asked that the sentence be delayed until Jan. 1 so she could deliver her baby as planned at the Palomar Medical Center in Escondido. The delay would also let her provide initial infant care and find suitable arrangements for the baby’s care while she serves her jail time, said Michael Cava, a deputy probation officer.

But the district attorney’s office said it is not in the practice of arranging jail time for the convenience of criminals, and the Vista judge said the time had come for her to pay her penance, the baby’s due date notwithstanding.

As it was, Laura Heymer had to plead to have her jail time delayed even by one day when she was ordered by Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Prager on Monday to immediately start her jail sentence. At the time, her 4-year-old son, Eddie, was in the courthouse baby-sitting room and her 8-year-old boy, Zacchery, was due home any minute from school.

“For a while I didn’t think I was even going to be able to say goodby to my two kids, let alone make sure my 4-year-old would even get home,” Laura Heymer said by telephone Wednesday from the Las Colinas detention center for women in Santee.

“That night, I told them that mommy had a really bad day in court. I asked them if they remembered the accident. Zacchery said he did. I said, well, it’s time to pay and the judge felt this was the time and unfortunately he gave me the worse that could be given.”

Under a plea bargain that led to her guilty plea in August to felony drunk driving and causing an injury, the maximum possible sentence Heymer could get was a year in local custody. And that’s what the judge ordered. Given chronic crowding, Las Colinas jail commander Capt. Nelda Spencer said Heymer probably will be released after spending between six to eight months in detention.

Now that she’s in jail, Heymer said, “I’m just so concerned that this stress is going to affect the delivery. I know that being here is bad for the baby. Every time a guard slams the steel door, the baby jumps. It’s very difficult for anybody, let alone someone bringing in a baby, to stay calm with those kinds of sounds.”

Dr. Robert Trifunovic, her obstetrician-gynecologist in San Marcos, said he is bothered by the court’s decision to put his patient behind bars just before the baby’s arrival.

“Why not defer the sentence for another month or two?” he asked. “I don’t want to trivialize what she was put away for. . . . But here’s a woman who initiated her own prenatal care at a time when one of the biggest problems in the country is pregnant women who don’t do that, and now she can’t follow through with it in the last week and through delivery.”

Trifunovic said he is also concerned about his patient getting caught up in jail violence. “You hear stories of people beating up on each other in jail. Who’s to say she might not encounter some blunt trauma in jail that will cause problems for her and her baby, conceivably serious problems going as far as the death of the baby,” he said.

“I know women do have babies in prison care, but why not wait just an extra month in this case?”

John Jimenez, the public defender appointed to her case, said he was “outraged . . . and deeply disappointed that the court felt committed to some arbitrary date for sentencing, even though it might jeopardize the life of this woman and this unborn baby.”

“They don’t have a doctor on staff at Las Colinas. They don’t have a delivery room where a baby can be born in a safe, medically correct manner,” Jimenez said.

But jail officials say that, among the 430 or so women at Las Colinas any given day, about 30 are pregnant, and that, on the average, one woman a week goes into labor.

Virtually all of them have gotten to the hospital in time for delivery, said Debra Fraser, who supervises the jail’s round-the-clock nursing staff.

“In the seven years I’ve been here, we’ve only had one baby born here at Las Colinas,” Fraser said. “And that was a woman we already had taken to UCSD (Medical Center) and they sent her back to us with instructions that we should have her walk around some more. It wasn’t like we didn’t get her to the hospital in time; they just weren’t ready for her yet.”

Fraser said that, when a woman goes into labor, there’s usually enough time for an ambulance to take her to the UC San Diego Medical Center, which contracts with the county to provide obstetric care for female inmates. When labor is further along, the mother is taken to the closer El Cajon Valley Hospital.

Mother and baby typically remain together at the hospital for 24 hours before the woman is returned to Las Colinas and the child is turned over to someone else--a family member or a temporary foster home, Fraser said.

Heymer said Wednesday she still hasn’t figured out what to do with her baby because she had hoped the sentence would be delayed or, better yet, she’d be ordered to jail for just a few days, then released to her home to perform community work.

“I’m still so shook up, I haven’t been able to think clearly. I just can’t imagine them taking the baby away from me,” she said.

One option she considered--and discounted--was to have her boyfriend, the baby’s father, care for the newborn. But his work schedule would preclude staying home with the baby, she said.

Foster care concerns her, she said, “because I’ve heard stories that, once a baby is in the care of foster parents, you have to fight to get your child back. That’s scary.”

Heymer’s troubles began on Aug. 16, 1990, when she left a girlfriend’s birthday celebration at an Oceanside restaurant after having consumed wine with dinner and schnapps afterward. She said she had hoped she’d get a ride home with a friend, but that person left the party early so she drove herself home. Just a block away, she ran a red light and collided with another vehicle, totally wrecking both cars.

Witnesses said she started to walk away from the scene dazed. The driver and passenger of the other car were temporarily knocked unconscious and sustained cuts and scrapes, according to court records, but they apparently suffered no lingering problems.

Heymer’s blood alcohol level was measured later at 0.24%, or three times the legal limit for driving while intoxicated.

Because she caused injury, she faced a maximum of three years in state prison, but the guilty plea won her the promise that she wouldn’t be sentenced to more than a year in local jail.

During the ensuing court appearances--when she was allowed to remain free on her own recognizance--Heymer missed two court appointments. One, she said, she simply forgot. Another time, she said, she wrote the wrong date on her calendar. Each time she voluntarily returned to court and was admonished but not jailed.

Judge Prager said he couldn’t discuss the case, or why he ordered her to jail a week before the baby’s due date, because he will have jurisdiction over the case until the end of probation in five years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly said he argued for immediate jail “because I don’t think she’s the most trustworthy individual. She already had missed two court appearances, and, once she has the baby, I think it would be very difficult for her to give the baby up and voluntarily go into custody. She might make herself scarce.”

Besides, Casserly said, “I don’t believe in allowing defendants to dictate when to do their punishment. They’re not being punished at their convenience.”

If her attorney or doctor had specific evidence that incarceration might directly affect the pregnancy, “we’d be interested in listening,” Casserly said. “We don’t want to endanger an unborn child.”

Jimenez, Heymer’s attorney, said he won’t continue to argue the sentence. “I’ve already said everything I could say to the court,” he remarked.