MOTHER'S MURDER RETRIAL STARTS

Prosecutors Say The Mead Valley Drug User's Baby Died From Meth-
Tainted Breast Milk

A Riverside County woman being retried on charges of killing her
infant son with methamphetamine-tainted breast milk knew her drug use
could be lethal and tried to cover up his death, a prosecutor told
jurors Wednesday.

Amy Leanne Prien's murder trial comes seven months after a state
appeals court overturned her second-degree murder conviction in 2003,
ruling the trial judge had erred when he instructed the jury.

In the new trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Allison Nelson is focusing on
trying to prove that Prien, of Mead Valley, knew her chronic
methamphetamine use could kill her 3-month-old son, Jacob Wesley
Smith, but continued using the drug regardless. The appeals court had
ruled that the prosecutor would have to prove this "implied malice"
to win a second-degree murder conviction.

"There's no doubt the defendant is a meth addict and that she
transmitted meth to her child through the method of breast milk,"
prosecutor Allison Nelson told jurors at Riverside County Superior
Court in Corona.

Stephen Yagman, Prien's attorney, argued in his short opening
statement that prosecutors lacked the evidence to show Prien caused
her son's death by breast-feeding and said that Prien's roommate
might have been responsible.

"This baby was weaned a long time before this occurred," Yagman told
jurors. "The only one thing that matters is causation of death, and
there's no evidence that breast milk caused that baby to die."

Yagman also told jurors it was suspicious that the Riverside County
coroner lost a baby bottle that was near Prien's bed when the infant died.

"You will find -- to your shock -- that the coroner didn't test that
bottle, and lost that bottle," Yagman said.

Yagman contends that Prien's roommate at the time, Donald Fox, was
dealing drugs from their home and sometimes packaged meth in baby
bottle liners as a way to deliver the drug to his buyers.

During Prien's first trial, Riverside County Dist. Atty. Grover Trask
said he hoped the aggressive prosecution would be a deterrent
methamphetamine use in the region, which he said was rampant.

Nelson told jurors in her opening statement that Prien would often
smoke meth in her bedroom, then breast-feed Jacob.

Prien found the baby dead on her bed the morning of Jan. 19, 2002.
The prosecutor said Prien didn't call 911 for an hour, so she had
time to escort a pair of drug buyers from Corona out of her home and
clean up drugs and drug paraphernalia in the home.

"You don't want police to find your drug stash," Nelson told jurors.

Judge Patrick F. Magers, who did not hear the previous case, this
week ruled that the prosecutor could introduce evidence of Prien's
previous arrests and drug use. Nelson told jurors of Prien's 2000
arrest on suspicion of methamphetamine possession, her positive drug
test from the day of Jacob's death, and a later April 2002 positive drug test.

Nelson said that when Prien was asked by the Sheriff's Department how
the meth got into the baby, first "she said she had quit
breast-feeding," then "came up with a story of meth being slipped
into her coffee."

Nelson told jurors she planned to call about 40 witnesses, including
Prien's fellow drug users and a paternal grandmother who Nelson said
had told Prien before Jacob's death, "Drugs and kids don't mix."

Fox, the first prosecution witness, said he saw Prien breast-feeding
Jacob "a couple days prior to him dying" and telling her, "What are
you doing, Amy? You're high on meth." Fox testified, "She told me to
mind my own ... business."

In a transcript of the first trial, however, Fox testified he last
saw Prien nursing Jacob a month before the death.

A state appeals court in September reversed Prien's 2003 sentence of
15 years to life in prison, throwing out the murder conviction and
three other felony child endangerment charges relating to Prien's
handling of her three surviving children.

The court upheld her conviction of felony child endangerment relating
to Jacob's death but ruled that Prien must be resentenced for that crime.