D.A. Won’t File Murder Count in Death of a Premature Baby

A convicted prostitute who gave birth to a premature infant in a Santa Ana motel room will not face murder charges in the child’s death, prosecutors said Thursday after reviewing the case for almost seven months.

An autopsy determined that Jennifer Jenkins’ baby boy died of “prematurity” and cocaine ingested in the womb, but the woman was charged only with child endangerment, said Tory Richards, a spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

“Unfortunately, because of the way the law is written, this is not a murder case,” Richards said.

Jenkins, who is in Chino State Prison for violating her parole on a 1997 drug conviction, faces an eight-year prison sentence if convicted of endangerment, Richards said.

According to prosecutors, Jenkins, 30, was at a motel on East First Street Jan. 21 when she complained to a friend about stomach pains. She went into the bathroom and then left, saying she would return later.

The friend heard noises in the bathroom and discovered a baby in the tub. Prosecutors said the infant was three months’ premature and weighed just 2 pounds. He died 25 days later.

Jenkins was arrested when she returned hours later with baby formula, police reported.

Another baby, born to Jenkins just seven months earlier, was in the motel room at the time, authorities said. That infant and Jenkins’ three other children, ages 12, 10 and 8, were placed in the custody of the county’s Child Protective Services, Richards said.

A team of prosecutors, police officials, social workers, health officials and others considered whether the mother could be charged with murder. That team reviews all deaths of children.

“In this case, the question was, . . . ‘Should the mother be held criminally liable for what she does to her body prior to the fetus becoming a child?’ It’s not just a criminal question. It’s a life question too,” said a law enforcement official familiar with the case.

The law required investigators “to look at what happened before a child’s birth separate from what happened after its birth,” the official said. That legal requirement affords a woman the constitutional right to privacy and to have an abortion.

Charging Jenkins with murder for using the cocaine that was found in the newborn’s system would be like charging a woman with murder for using abortion to end a pregnancy, Richards said.

Thus, prosecutors determined that the evidence allowed them to accuse Jenkins only of child endangerment for leaving a premature, newly born infant alone for several hours.

“It’s frustrating in this situation, where a fetus is exposed to illegal drugs that can kill an adult. But the law says that anything that happened prebirth limits the district attorney’s ability to file homicide charges,” the official said.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Henderson said:

“From a prosecutor’s point of view, these are terribly sad cases. I’ve had three or four cases like this in the past two years. There’s too many cases of abuse of cocaine and methamphetamine by people who are pregnant.”