Santa Ana Clinic Owner’s Murder Conviction Stands

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand the murder conviction and 16-year prison sentence of a former Santa Ana abortion clinic owner whose patient suffered a seizure and died during an illegal abortion.

Without comment, the justices rejected Alicia Ruiz Hanna’s appeal, which contended that there was not enough evidence to support her second-degree murder conviction.

The court’s decision was hailed by prosecutors. “We are pleased,” said Orange County Assistant Dist. Atty. Rick King, who prosecuted the case in 1994. “It appears now that we have our final chapter.”

Hanna’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Steve Biskar, could not be reached for comment.

Angela Nieto Sanchez, 27, a mother of four, came to Hanna’s unlicensed clinic in 1993 and requested an abortion. As two of her children sat in the waiting room, Sanchez died on an examination table after reacting violently to an unknown drug injected by Hanna.

At the trial, prosecutors argued that Sanchez could have been saved because a fire station staffed with emergency workers was less than one mile away. Hanna admitted to jurors that she did not dial 911 because she feared being arrested for performing illegal abortions, behavior that the trial judge called “callous and self-serving.”

Sanchez’s then-12-year-old daughter saw Hanna trying to hoist the body into a car trunk. A clinic employee testified that Hanna planned to dump the body in Tijuana.

King said that Sanchez’s orphaned children now live in Mexico.

Times wire services contributed to this report.