In 2008 Jennifer Jorgensen of Suffolk County was convicted of manslaughter after she crashed her car and lost her baby.
Jorgensen was in her third trimester. She was indicted for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
This week the state’s highest court rejected the manslaughter conviction against Jorgensen.
The court ruled 5-1 the baby, that lived 5 days after a C-section, was not a person.
Life News reported:
A New York court recently ruled that a Long Island woman who killed her baby in a car accident cannot be convicted because her baby was not a person yet.
The Times Union reports Jennifer Jorgensen previously was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter for causing the death of her baby daughter in a car crash. She also was indicted for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the report.
Jorgensen was in her third trimester when the car accident occurred in May 2008. Her daughter was delivered by C-section after the head-on collision and died six days later, according to the report.
In October, the New York Court of Appeals reversed Jorgensen’s conviction, ruling that she was not guilty because she fatally injured her daughter before she was born.
The court ruling compared Jorgensen’s actions to self-induced abortion and called it an offense that is “no greater than a misdemeanor.”