Mom Guilty of Murder in Boy’s Death

A 21-year-old woman was convicted of second-degree murder Thursday for rolling onto her baby and accidentally suffocating him while sleeping off a drug binge.

Christine Nicole Symmonds, her attorney holding her hand, bent her head, shook her shoulders and cried softly when the court clerk read the verdict. Symmonds also was found guilty of child abuse causing death.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Howard Gundy had asked jurors to return with a murder verdict; the defense had called for involuntary manslaughter.

Jurors showed no emotion as the verdict was read, but Orange County Superior Court Judge Carla M. Singer acknowledged the toll the trial had taken. “It’s been an ordeal for everyone,” she told them.

Jurors, who deliberated less than a day, declined to comment.

Symmonds faces 15 years to life in prison when she is sentenced Dec. 17. Gundy said there were extenuating circumstances and indicated he would favor a less severe sentence.

“I’d acknowledge this is not like the usual second-degree murder case,” he said, pointing out the murder was unintentional and Symmonds “had a pretty tough life.”

Symmonds is being held without bail. Her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dolores Yost, declined to comment.

Three-month-old Jason Blanchard died June 27, 2003, while he and his mother slept on an air mattress in a Lake Forest home where they had been staying.

Symmonds had spent the previous night partying, smoking methamphetamine and marijuana and drinking rum and whiskey while her son slept in another room.

She changed the baby’s diaper and dressed him in a yellow sleeper before she went to sleep around dawn. In her sleep, Symmonds rolled onto Jason, pushed his face against the mattress and suffocated him.

Gundy said jurors told him a key piece of evidence for the murder verdict was a lengthy interview Symmonds had with police officers in which she conceded being a longtime meth user who had been high on drugs for several days at the time of the child’s death.

Symmonds had previously given up custody of an older daughter to the child’s father because she said she could not beat her methamphetamine addiction.

Yost tried to show that Symmonds was a caring mother, telling jurors that her child’s clothing was clean and that she carried a cloth bag filled with baby items, including a thermometer and a bottle. She said her client stopped using drugs when she became pregnant, and that Jason was born drug-free.

She also said that the mother had taken the baby to the doctor four times in his short life, evidence that she cared about him.