Sally Clark was an English solicitor who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of her two infant sons. Clark's first son died in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and her second son died in similar circumstances in January 1998. A month later, Clark was arrested and tried for both deaths. The defence argued that the children had died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The prosecution case relied on flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure by squaring his estimate of a chance of 1 in 8500 of an individual SIDS death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was no statistical basis for Meadow's claim, and expressed concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts".
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 is a United States law that recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
Scott Lee Peterson is an American convicted murderer. In 2004, he was convicted of the 2002 first-degree murder of his wife, Laci, who was pregnant at the time, and the second-degree murder of their unborn son, Conner, in Modesto, California.
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States overturning the abortion law of Georgia. The Supreme Court's decision was released on January 22, 1973, the same day as the decision in the better-known case of Roe v. Wade.
Wee Care Nursery School, located in Maplewood, New Jersey, was the subject of a day care child abuse case that was tried during the 1980s. Although Margaret Kelly Michaels was prosecuted and convicted, the decision was reversed after she spent five years in prison. An appellate court ruled that several features of the original trial had produced an unjust ruling and the conviction was reversed. The case was studied by several psychologists who were concerned about the interrogation methods used and the quality of the children's testimony in the case. This resulted in research concerning the topic of children's memory and suggestibility, resulting in new recommendations for performing interviews with child victims and witnesses.
The born alive rule is a common law legal principle that holds that various criminal laws, such as homicide and assault, apply only to a child that is "born alive". U.S. courts have overturned this rule, citing recent advances in science and medicine, and in several states feticide statutes have been explicitly framed or amended to include fetuses in utero. Abortion in Canada is still governed by the born alive rule, as courts continue to hold to its foundational principles. In 1996, the Law Lords confirmed that the rule applied in English law but that alternative charges existed in lieu, such as a charge of unlawful or negligent manslaughter instead of murder.
Trupti Patel is a qualified pharmacist from Maidenhead in Berkshire, England, who was acquitted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, Amar, Jamie, and Mia.
Donna Anthony is a British woman from Somerset who was jailed in 1998 after being convicted of the murder of her two babies. She was cleared and freed after having spent more than six years in prison.
Child destruction is the name of a statutory offence in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Hong Kong. The offence of that name has been abolished and replaced in Victoria, Australia.
Kermit Barron Gosnell is an American former physician and serial killer. He provided abortions at his clinic in West Philadelphia. Gosnell was convicted of the murders of three infants who were born alive after using drugs to induce birth, was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of one woman during an abortion procedure, and was convicted of several other medically related crimes.
Foeticide, or feticide, is the act of killing a fetus, or causing a miscarriage. Definitions differ between legal and medical applications, whereas in law, feticide frequently refers to a criminal offense, in medicine the term generally refers to a part of an abortion procedure in which a provider intentionally induces fetal demise to avoid the chance of an unintended live birth, or as a standalone procedure in the case of selective reduction.
A forced abortion may occur when the perpetrator causes abortion by force, threat or coercion, or by taking advantage of a situation where a pregnant individual is unable to give consent, or when valid consent is in question due to duress. This may also include the instances when the conduct was neither justified by medical or hospital treatment. Like forced sterilization, forced abortion may include a physical invasion of female reproductive organs.
Chemical endangerment is the crime of exposing a child to a controlled substance or an environment in which it is produced. It was added to the Alabama legal code in 2006, with the intention of protecting children from methamphetamine laboratories. Since then, it has been used to prosecute women who give birth to children that test positive for harmful drugs and also THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
Bei Bei Shuai is a Chinese immigrant to the United States who became the subject of international public attention from 2011 to 2013, when the authorities of the state of Indiana charged her with murder and attempted feticide after her suicide attempt allegedly resulted in the death of the fetus with which she was pregnant. In Britain, The Guardian described Shuai's case, as well as those of other women who lose their pregnancies in cases of maternal drug addiction or a suicide attempt, as part of a "creeping criminalisation of pregnancy across America".
James Joseph Richardson is an African-American man who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1968 for the October 1967 mass murder of his seven children. They died after eating a poisoned breakfast containing the organic phosphate pesticide parathion. At the time of the murders, Richardson was a migrant farm worker in Arcadia, Florida living with his wife Annie Mae Richardson and their children. At a trial in Fort Myers, Florida, the jury found him guilty of murdering the children and sentenced him to death. As a result of the United States Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision finding the death penalty unconstitutional, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was then exonerated in 1989 after 21 years, when his case was revisited by appointed Miami-Dade County prosecutor Janet Reno. Following Richardson's exoneration, the babysitter of the Richardson children, Bessie Reece, has been named as the key suspect. Reece died in 1993. In 2016 he began receiving compensation under a state law narrowly tailored to his case.
Juan A. Rivera Jr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan, Illinois. He was convicted twice on the basis of a confession that he said was coerced. No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. In 2015 he received a $20 million settlement from Lake County, Illinois for wrongful conviction, formerly the largest settlement of its kind in United States history.
The prosecution of Rodricus Crawford in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in 2013, attracted national media attention. Crawford, a young black man, was convicted and sentenced to death that year for suffocating his one-year-old son. His death sentence was seen as part of a pattern in the parish, which has the highest rate of death penalty sentencing in the nation. The prosecutor in this case said this penalty was needed for society's revenge.
Abortion in Indiana was illegal except in cases of rape or incest before 10 weeks post-fertilization, for fatal fetal abnormalities, or to preserve the life and physical health of the mother. In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court ruling, Indiana outlawed most abortions, with certain exceptions. However, on 22 September 2022, this law was blocked by Special Judge Kelsey B. Hanlon, thus effectively returning the status of legal abortions in Indiana to prior conditions. On January 12, 2023, the Indiana Supreme Court will begin hearings on whether the state's ban on abortion violates its state constitution.
Abortion in Malaysia is illegal. It is regulated under Sections 312–316 of the Penal Code. Access to abortion in Malaysia has been hampered by religious, cultural, and social stigmas against abortion, poor awareness of abortion legislation among health professionals, and the high cost of abortion services in the private health sector. As a result, illegal and risky unsafe abortions are prevalent in Malaysia, including self-induced abortions. Please change this. Abortion is legal based on circumstances.
Melissa Elizabeth Lucio is the first woman of Hispanic descent to be sentenced to death in the U.S. state of Texas. She was convicted of capital murder after the death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah, who was found to have scattered bruising in various stages of healing, as well as injuries to her head and contusions of the kidneys, lungs and spinal cord. Prosecutors said that Mariah's injuries were the result of physical abuse, while Lucio's attorneys say that her death was caused by a fall down the stairs two days prior.
