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Prosecutor urged to drop case against woman charged after miscarriage [1]

['Kim Bellware']

Date: 2023-12-27

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Medical and legal professionals are rejecting the claim by an Ohio district attorney that he lacks the power to drop the case against an Ohio woman charged with abusing a corpse after she miscarried at home, a prosecution that has drawn national attention to the ways women can be criminalized for pregnancy outcomes.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins (D) released a memo last week saying his office is “duty bound” to follow Ohio law and present the felony abuse of a corpse charge against Brittany Watts, 33, to a grand jury. Watkins’s office said he would not make further comments beyond the memo while the nine-person grand jury continues to investigate; the jury is expected to vote in the coming weeks on whether to indict Watts, who has pleaded not guilty.

Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights (OPRR) on Friday wrote a letter responding to Watkins, calling claims that he is obligated to present the case “troubling.”

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“While you may believe you are ‘duty bound’ to proceed, you are, in fact, under no legal obligation to do so. As has been widely publicized and as you well know, but choose to ignore, the principle of prosecutorial discretion is well established in both federal and Ohio law,” the letter reads.

OPRR cited a June 2022 letter signed by more than 90 elected prosecutors around the country, including the Cuyahoga County prosecutor and the Columbus city attorney in Ohio, who pledged to use their prosecutorial discretion to pursue serious crimes rather than enforce abortion bans or “criminalize personal medical decisions.”

Crimes at the felony level are handled by Ohio’s county prosecutors, who decide what cases to present to a grand jury for consideration, Zach Klein, the Columbus city attorney, told The Washington Post in a message.

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“Just as I would not prioritize prosecution of any abortion-related misdemeanors being floated by GOP state lawmakers and anti-choice activists, I would encourage county prosecutors not to present abortion-related felony cases to a grand jury,” Klein said in a statement.

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In September, when Watts went to the hospital in pain and passing large blood clots, doctors told her that despite some fetal cardiac activity, her roughly 22-week pregnancy was not viable. She was in and out of the hospital over the next three days, including a lengthy wait for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether her preterm pregnancy, which was on the borderline of Ohio’s abortion limit, could be induced without legal liability for the doctors. Watts eventually went home against medical advice and experienced the miscarriage on the toilet.

When Watts returned to the hospital for treatment, a nurse who had inquired about the fetal remains called the police after Watts said she had taken what was in her toilet, clogged with blood, tissue, stool and fluid, and placed it in a bucket. Police eventually took the toilet from Watts’s home and found a 15-ounce fetus lodged in the pipe.

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Though Watts did not have an abortion, advocates for abortion access said her case is abortion-adjacent, exemplifying the way women can be policed and criminalized for decisions made during pregnancy or for the outcome of a pregnancy.

“We’re talking about a health matter, a sadly common experience, where there is no law that says how to deal with the remains of a miscarriage at home,” said Sara Ainsworth, the senior legal and policy director at If/When/How, a nonprofit network of lawyers who advocate abortion rights. “At every point, a prosecutor has the power to put the brakes on.”

Traci L. Timko, Watts’s defense attorney, said during a November hearing that her client was being “demonized for something that goes on every day.” Watts, who has no criminal record, faces up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $2,500 if her case moves to trial and she is found guilty.

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From a defense perspective, Ainsworth said that while grand juries are meant to be a check on the system by giving more people the chance to examine evidence, many of the built-in aspects of the process are unfair.

In Ohio, like other states, defendants can be called to testify before a grand jury, but they do not get to have legal representation or the chance to put on a defense, according to the Ohio Bar Association. Witnesses are not cross-examined, and prosecutors have more leeway in the kind of evidence they can include. If prosecutors have evidence or information that would help the defense, they are also not required to present it.

Watkins in his memo said Trumbull County grand juries decide against indictment — what’s known as a “no bill” — in about 20 percent of cases.

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[1] Url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/27/brittany-watts-miscarriage-grand-jury/

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