Victory in the Regina McKnight Case

Via the ACLU Blog:

Earlier this week, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Regina McKnight, a woman convicted in 2001 of homicide after suffering a stillbirth and admitting to cocaine usage, did not have a fair trial. In so doing, the court recognized that McKnight's counsel failed to make use of existing evidence that could have shown that factors other than McKnight's drug use could have caused the stillbirth.

The court's ruling has significant import for the dozens of pregnant women in the United States each year that, like McKnight, are criminally charged for continuing their pregnancies to term despite their struggles with drug addition. (A recent New York Times article profiles several such women and their prosecutions in Alabama.)

While courts in other states have routinely rejected prosecutions of pregnant, drug-using women, they have not addressed the question of whether pre-natal exposure to substances causes harm to the fetus.