COURT REFUSES CASE OF JAILED S.C. WOMAN CONVICTED OF MURDERING BABY

Stillborn With Cocaine In Blood

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider the case of a
woman sentenced to 12 years in prison for murder after drugs were found in
the system of her stillborn daughter.

Regina McKnight was convicted under South Carolina's homicide by child abuse
law for the 1999 death. Her lawyers say she is the first woman convicted of
homicide for suffering a stillbirth.

The case would have brought the court into a legal and constitutional debate
over fetal rights. The court's answer would have had implications for the
related fight over legalized abortion.

The S.C. Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence earlier this year,
ruling that the punishment was not too harsh because McKnight should have
known taking cocaine could harm her baby.

Monday's action by the U.S. Supreme Court means that ruling stands, and
McKnight will remain in prison. The high court did not comment in turning
aside her appeal.

McKnight's lawyers say she is borderline mentally retarded and lived with
her mother until her mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1998.

McKnight quickly became homeless, addicted to drugs and pregnant.

McKnight's lawyers say there is no proof her cocaine use caused the
child's death.

The lower court ruling opens women to prosecution for any number of
actions taken while pregnant, her lawyers said.

"Pregnant women in South Carolina are left without any reliable basis
for deeming whether, in the event of stillbirth, they could be
punished, with life imprisonment, for homicide," McKnight's lawyers
wrote.

Smoking, medications, certain kinds of jobs and stress can all
contribute to stillbirths, organizations supporting McKnight wrote in
a friend of the court filing.

More than two dozen medical and public health organizations backed
McKnight's Supreme Court appeal.

"The criminal investigation and possible prosecution of women like Ms.
McKnight sends a perilous message to pregnant addicts not to seek
prenatal care or drug treatment," to withhold information from doctors
or to abort their fetuses, the American Public Health Association and
other groups told the court.

S.C. legislators passed a law in 1992 making it a felony to cause the
death of a child younger than 11 through child abuse or neglect "under
circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life."

The S.C. court said that language applies to a fetus. The same court
had previously held that a viable fetus is legally a person.