In 2008, 21-year-old Samantha Jessie became pregnant with her third child in Terrell, Georgia. Shortly prior to this pregnancy, Jessie had voluntarily relinquished her parental rights to her second child, then four months old, who had extensive medical needs and whom, child welfare officials determined, had essentially been abandoned at a Macon hospital where he was being treated. When Jessie became pregnant again, she feared disapproval from her family and attempted to hide her pregnancy. Though several of Jessie’s family members suspected that she was pregnant, Jessie steadfastly denied it.
On the night of December 17, 2008, Jessie gave birth to a baby boy on the floor of a bedroom in her grandmother’s house, while her toddler daughter was asleep in the same room and her grandmother was present elsewhere in the house. Jessie did not reveal to anyone that she had given birth. Though Jessie’s grandmother had overheard Jessie’s moans and what she believed were a baby’s cries that night, she did not enter Jessie’s bedroom to investigate and did not ask Jessie about it. The next day, Jessie’s grandmother relayed her suspicions to a relative, who notified authorities.
On December 23, 2008, GBI investigators questioned Jessie. Jessie first maintained that she had not been pregnant. On further questioning, Jessie admitted her pregnancy and claimed that she had miscarried and placed the fetus in a dumpster near her grandmother’s home. The agents then searched the dumpster Jessie had identified, finding no traces of a fetus. On the following day, in another interview, Jessie finally admitted to giving birth to a live baby boy, wrapping him tightly in a quilt that covered his face, and placing the bundle in a corner of the bedroom behind a bookshelf, where she left it. The next day, she placed the bundle in her grandmother’s lit kitchen fireplace, where it was consumed by fire.
In their search of Jessie’s grandmother’s home, GBI agents discovered, among other items of evidence, a pile of ash and debris in the backyard, from which they recovered numerous newborn-sized bones and bone fragments. A forensic anthropologist later determined that these bones and fragments together constituted approximately 60% of the skeleton of a single human infant. An obstetrician-gynecologist who examined Jessie shortly after her confession opined that Jessie had recently given birth.
In March 2010, a trial jury convicted Jessie of malice murder and concealing the death of another. She was sentenced to life in prison. Her attorney appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing among other things that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jessie had intended for the baby boy to die — a necessary element to proving malice murder.
The high court rejected that argument.
“Here, the evidence was easily susceptible to a finding that Jessie, who had previously given birth to two babies, clearly understood and intended that wrapping her unwanted newborn baby in a quilt that covered his face, stashing him in a corner for hours, and then incinerating him in a fireplace would cause his death,” the opinion says.
The defense attorney, who described Jessie as “a poor young black woman from the small town of Dawson, Georgia,” also argued that her sentence should be modified because a life sentence for such a young woman “because of such a tragic situation” was inhumane and constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
But the high court determined Jessie was properly sentenced under the law. “Contrary to Jessie’s contention, the fact that she was 22 years old at the time her life sentence was imposed does not render her sentence cruel and unusual,” the opinion says.
Jessie is confined at Pulaksi State Prison.
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