Prosecutors dropped a murder charge brought against an Oceanside woman whose infant died after she gave birth alone in her apartment, a case that collided with a newly strengthened state law designed to further protect reproductive freedom.
Instead, Kelsey Shande Carpenter, 33, pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of child endangerment and an allegation that it caused death. Vista Superior Court Judge Kelly Mok sentenced her to two years in prison.
The change of plea comes a few months after a California appellate court cleared the way for prosecutors to pursue a murder charge against Carpenter — although in doing so, the court warned that the sufficiency of the evidence was of the “thinnest of margins.”
In California, a woman cannot be criminally charged for the effect that her actions during pregnancy, such as drug use, have on her infant.
A central question of Carpenter’s case was whether the baby died for reasons related to actions and decisions during pregnancy and birth, or because of what Carpenter did — or didn’t — do after giving birth in November 2020. The infant was born alive.
Prosecutors argued in appellate filings that they charged Carpenter for failing to seek care for the baby, such as not calling 911 when the baby was turning blue and struggling to breathe.
Asked for comment on the resolution of the case, a District Attorney’s Office spokesperson said Friday that Carpenter “sought to accept responsibility for endangering her newborn resulting in death, as well as domestic violence acts committed against one of her intimate partners.”
“In all criminal matters the District Attorney’s Office analyzes cases individually to determine whether a particular resolution serves the interests of overall justice balancing aggravating and mitigating factors, as we did in this case,” the spokesperson said.
Carpenter’s attorney, Brian White, said he has a “favorable view” of the district attorney’s ultimate decision in the case.
“I think they recognized the mitigation in the case, they recognized the law and made a reasonable resolution,” he said.
He also said there was “pretty strong medical evidence” that the baby could have started bleeding in utero.
“They never should have filed this case to begin with,” he said.
Prosecutors charged Carpenter with second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
Last year, the day after she was ordered to stand trial for murder, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2223. His office said it would help to “ensure pregnancy loss is not criminalized.”
The legislation clarified that people could not be charged for decisions made during pregnancy, no matter the pregnancy outcome.
With that clarification in the law, Carpenter’s attorneys asked to have the charges dismissed, arguing the case was based on protected actions and decisions, and that it violated her right to choose to have an unattended home birth.
White said the law is aimed at protecting a woman’s autonomy over her body and birthing decisions, and said he believes the recent strengthening of that law helped his client’s case. “My hope is that down the road prosecutors facing these situations follow the law and avoid filing criminal charges,” he said.
The appellate court agreed that Carpenter could not be prosecuted for actions and decisions made during pregnancy, but said she could be charged for actions taken after the baby was born alive.
According to court documents and testimony from the preliminary hearing, prosecutors argued she didn’t want to give birth in a hospital. Authorities had removed her two sons from her care after each tested positive for drugs at birth, and she feared they would take this baby as well.
Carpenter was home alone in her apartment on Canyon Drive when she went into labor and gave birth.
She cut the baby’s umbilical cord but did not clamp it, according to court documents. She put a piece of tape over the stump to try to staunch the bleeding. She bathed and diapered the baby, and tried to breastfeed it. The child kept bleeding.
Carpenter told authorities she tried to give the newborn CPR because the baby was turning blue and struggling to breathe. She said her phone was dead so she couldn’t call 911 until she found the phone charger she had misplaced.
Carpenter said she lost blood during the delivery and passed out, later waking up to find the baby had died.
The Medical Examiner’s Office determined that the baby died from “methamphetamine and buprenorphine toxicity and unattended delivery.” Buprenorphine is often proscribed in place of methadone for pregnant women. She told police she had been receiving daily treatment for methadone.
At Carpenter’s preliminary hearing, the doctor who performed the autopsy on the child testified that blood loss from the umbilical stump was “very substantial and contributed to the death of the baby.”
White said two medical doctors reviewed the case for the defense, and both independently found an anomaly in the placenta that could have caused the baby to bleed while it was still in utero.
