State Law on Killing of a Fetus Expanded

The killer of a pregnant woman can be found guilty of the murder of her fetus as well, even if the assailant did not know the victim was pregnant, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court’s 6-1 decision expands the reach of a 1970 state law that made it possible for prosecutors to charge assailants with the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked. A similar federal law making it a crime to kill a fetus in the commission of a federal offense was signed into law last week. Both laws exempt abortion.

Monday’s ruling is expected to lead to more convictions in California for second-degree fetal murder, particularly in drunk driving cases in which pregnant women are injured or killed. The state high court already has upheld fetal murder convictions in cases in which the defendant knew or should have known that the woman was pregnant, even if the fetus was not viable.

The newest ruling came in a case involving a victim who was 11 to 13 weeks pregnant and not yet showing. A lower court had ruled that the defendant could not have acted in disregard for the fetal life because he had no idea the fetus existed.

But the state Supreme Court said such knowledge was not necessary. “When a defendant commits an act ... with a conscious disregard for life in general, he acts with implied malice toward those he ends up killing,” Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the majority. “There is no requirement the defendant specifically know the existence of each victim.”

The state high court held that defendant Harold Wayne Taylor’s actions were akin to an assailant who walks down a hallway and shoots into closed doors. “He would be liable for the murder of all the victims struck by his bullets -- including a fetus of one of his anonymous victims who happened to be pregnant,” Brown wrote in People vs. Taylor, S112443.

When Taylor battered and shot Patty Fansler, he “acted with knowledge of the danger to and conscious disregard for life in general ... ,” Brown continued. “He did not need to be specifically aware how many potential victims his conscious disregard for life endangered.”

The ruling raised the prison sentence by 25 years for Taylor, who shot and killed Fansler, a former girlfriend, in 1999. Taylor now will serve 65 years to life for the two second-degree murders.

Taylor and Fansler met in the spring of 1987, dated and later moved in together. In July 1988, Fansler moved out. Taylor threatened to kill her at the time, according to the opinion, and Fansler eventually obtained a restraining order against him.

On March 9, 1999, Taylor entered Fansler’s Mendocino County apartment through a ruse and shot and killed her. An autopsy revealed that she was carrying a male fetus. Fansler weighed 200 pounds, and a pathologist who performed the autopsy said he could not discern her pregnancy by just observing her on an examination table.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard, who dissented, said a defendant should be guilty of murdering a fetus only if the fetus’ death resulted from an intentional act, “with knowledge of that particular danger.”

California amended its murder laws to include a fetus after the California Supreme Court in 1970 ruled that a man could not be found guilty of killing a fetus. In that case, a man had stomped on his former wife’s stomach to kill her fetus, or, as he put it, “stomp it out” of her. The woman survived, but the five-pound fetus died.

Kennard observed that the Legislature, in adding “fetus” to the murder laws, failed to also amend the state’s manslaughter law for killings that occur in the heat of passion. As a result, a defendant in California can be charged with murdering a fetus, but not with manslaughter of a fetus. Kennard said the discrepancy suggests that the Legislature did not intend to equate the killing of a fetus with the killing of a human being.

Deputy California Atty. Gen. Ross C. Moody, who represented the prosecution in the case, said Monday’s decision was the first in which an appeals court has recognized that a fetus can be murdered even if the killer was unaware of its existence.

“There is no knowledge requirement at all,” Moody said.

Taylor’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Abortion rights groups, which opposed the federal fetal murder law, did not intervene in the case before the California Supreme Court. Abortion rights advocates saw the federal law as a ploy to overturn a woman’s right to an abortion. The federal law refers to a fetus as a “child in utero” and defines it as any “member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

Amy Everitt, state director of NARAL Pro-Choice California, the local chapter of a group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights and Reproductive Rights Action League, said she was unfamiliar with Monday’s decision and could not comment on it.

“It’s such a murky area because you want justice done, and when a woman who is pregnant is hurt there should be a stiff penalty,” she said. “Why are people not up in arms about [Monday’s ruling?] I am not sure they won’t be when they hear about it.”

The National Right to Life Committee praised Monday’s decision, and said it would help deter attacks on pregnant women.