“A Stillborn Child Leads to a Murder Charge”: Me at AmCon

on an awful, years-long case:

In 2006, 15-year-old Rennie Gibbs became pregnant. She tested positive for marijuana and cocaine during her pregnancy. Her daughter Samiya was born a month premature, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. An autopsy on the child found traces of a cocaine byproduct, and Rennie was charged with murder—or rather, with what Mississippi calls “depraved heart murder,” signifying an especially callous crime. Gibbs’s case has wound its way through the legal system, and it is still unclear whether she will go on trial this spring; but if she does, Gibbs, now 23, will face the threat of life in prison.

These are the facts. Heartbreaking personal stories lie behind them, and broader societal stories as well. The story of Rennie and Samiya Gibbs is a story of a prosecutor with a cavalier approach to evidence; a story of scapegoating and the inability to accept tragedy; a story of the police state created by what Jim Henley calls “the war on some drugs”; and a story, too, about legal attempts to protect the unborn. “We can love them both” is one of the more inspiring slogans of the pro-life movement. What would loving them both look like, for Rennie and Samiya? I’m pretty sure “life in prison” is not the answer.

more–with a cri de coeur from me at the end.