Charge against Alabama woman who lost fetus in shooting 'defies logic': attorney

[July 02, 2019]  By Peter Szekely

(Reuters) - Attorneys on Monday urged an Alabama court to throw out a criminal charge against a woman whose fetus died after she was shot during a dispute, calling the state's legal rationale "flawed and twisted" and the case unsupported by the law.

The woman, Marshae Jones, 28, was arrested on Wednesday after a grand jury indicted her for manslaughter, concluding that she had intentionally caused the termination of her pregnancy in its fifth month by provoking a fight that led to the shooting.

The same Jefferson County grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against the woman who shot Jones, Ebony Jemison, finding that she acted in self defense during the Dec. 4 altercation in Pleasant Grove, just west of Birmingham.

The case is seen as a test of a law in Alabama in which voters last November passed a constitutional amendment that gave fetuses the full legal rights and protections of people. The same principle prompted the Republican-controlled state legislature this year to enact a law banning abortion in all cases, including for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Jones' lawyers argued that under the state's theory that Jones intended to cause the death of her fetus, she would have had to have known that starting a fight would cause Jemison to shoot her in the stomach.

"It defies logic and reason to believe that Ms. Jones' legal provocation was caused by her unborn child," the team of lawyers headed by Birmingham Attorney Mark White wrote in their motion to the Jefferson County Circuit Criminal Court.

Jones' lawyers did not directly cite last year's Alabama constitutional amendment in their motion.

Further, Alabama law precludes the prosecution of "any woman with respect to her unborn child," the motion said.

The Bessemer Cutoff District Attorney's Office said in a statement last week that it was still considering whether "to prosecute it as a manslaughter case, reduce it to a lesser charge or not to prosecute it."

In a statement on Monday, the D.A.'s office said it "will soon make a determination about further action" in the case.

"That decision will be based on the evidence provided, the applicable laws and what we believe to be in the best interest for all the parties involved," the office said. "The filing of the motion to dismiss does not change that fact."

Jones, who has no criminal history and is already the mother of a 6-year-old, lost not only her unborn child but also her job and her house in a fire, according to the Yellowhammer Fund, an Alabama-based advocacy group that provides financial assistance to women seeking abortions in the state.

Jones was released on bail on Thursday, according to jail records.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas and Cynthia Osterman)

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