Nevada Woman Convicted of Manslaughter After Stillbirth Had Conviction Vacated

Patience Rousseau was arrested in Humboldt County, Nevada, in May 2018 after sheriff's deputies questioned her about a Facebook post in which she expressed grief over a stillbirth and referred to the fetus by the name Abel. Body camera footage showed deputies arriving at her rural Winnemucca home in tactical gear to serve a search warrant.

Rousseau told officers she had experienced a miscarriage and asked why law enforcement was involved. Deputies located a red cross painted with Abel's name on a green plot behind the house, according to police body camera footage and a report. They dug up the remains and removed them in a law enforcement vehicle.

Two days later Rousseau was arrested and charged with felony manslaughter and concealing birth. Rousseau, a single mother of two young boys who was struggling financially, told deputies she had taken large quantities of cinnamon and lifted heavy objects while pregnant in an effort to have a miscarriage.

She had made an appointment for an abortion at a clinic 165 miles away in Reno but said her car broke down and she had no transportation. Doctors later testified there was no scientific proof that her actions caused the stillbirth. She was convicted under a Nevada statute that makes it a crime for a woman to take drugs with the intent to terminate a pregnancy.

Nevada permits abortion. Rousseau was not convicted on the concealing birth charge. She served more than two years in prison before her conviction was vacated in 2021.

McGee vacated the conviction after finding that Rousseau's public defender had been overworked and provided ineffective assistance by advising her to enter a guilty plea. The judge described the case as ranking among a small number involving a total miscarriage of justice.

Rousseau was awarded a $100,000 settlement in February according to court documents. Rousseau told CNN the experience from the stillbirth through her imprisonment was traumatic. "I thought I was doing what was right for my circumstances, and then to be told that I was wrong, right after going through all of that alone ...

and then to be punished for all of it without getting any sort of help mentally has hurt me so much," she said.

Cnn reported that Rousseau's case fits into a pattern in which women have been charged in connection with pregnancy loss even in states where abortion remains legal. Prosecutors have used antiquated statutes or laws not intended to punish those experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth, according to legal experts who spoke with the network.

Pregnancy Justice documented the highest number on record of people criminally charged for conduct related to pregnancy in the first year after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Karen Thompson, legal director of the nonprofit Pregnancy Justice, said there has been a dedicated effort to criminalize pregnancy outcomes alongside abortion.

Rousseau's attorney Laura Fitzsimmons, who worked to vacate the conviction, said cases like this are complicated because women who have mixed feelings about a pregnancy that ends in loss often experience guilt. Before the case Rousseau had worked a variety of jobs including insulating houses, bartending, detailing cars, cleaning hotels and driving a taxi for 15 years.

She described moving frequently during childhood across South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington while experiencing abuse. She said she had faced homelessness and poverty while raising her two children.