At her death, Alejandra Molina was underweight by about 3 to 4 pounds.
When the 7-month-old infant was found dead in a sweltering room with no air conditioner, she had been unattended for 16 hours. Her body was riddled with bug bites.
The infant’s mother, Jessica Shah, is serving a life sentence after she was found guilty in 2013 of felony murder and two counts of first-degree cruelty to children.
On Monday, nearly four years later, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously threw out her conviction, giving Shah a possible shot at a new trial.
The decision by the state’s highest court was based on what it believes is a mistake by the trial court judge. Although there was enough evidence for a rational jury to convict Shah of the felony charges against her, the judge made an error by not telling jurors that they have the option to convict her of reckless conduct, which is a lesser offense and a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, according to the 22-page ruling.
The ruling comes more than five years after Alejandra, who was born 13 weeks premature, died.
Alejandra weighed just 1 pound and 14 ounces when she was born in December 2010. She weighed 4 pounds and 8 ounces when she left the hospital about three months later.
Court records say Shah completely depended on her oldest daughter, then a 14-year-old with attention-deficit disorder, to take care of Alejandra, who needed regular feeding because of her delicate condition. The night before Alejandra was found dead, at about 7 p.m., Shah checked on her but otherwise relied on the teen, identified in court records as C.P., to feed and tend to the infant as needed.
The next morning, Aug. 1, 2011, at about 10 a.m., Shah woke C.P. and asked her to check on Alejandra while she went to the bank, court records say. But C.P. fell asleep instead. They found Alejandra dead at about 1 p.m., three hours later. A medical examiner found that the infant died of dehydration and hyperthermia. It was summer, with temperatures hovering in the high 90s, and the air conditioner in the Columbus, Ga., house, where Shah lived with three other children, was broken.
By the time first responders arrived, blood was no longer circulating in the infant’s body, a medic testified during the trial in early 2013, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported.
According to the ruling, Shah’s reliance on her teenage daughter could suggest she did not intentionally harm or starve Alejandra, as prosecutors have alleged. Instead, it could qualify as a reckless conduct. So in convicting Shah, jurors should have been instructed to find her guilty of the lesser offense if they believed that was the case. But Superior Court Judge Gil McBride did not do so.
The ruling leaves it open for prosecutors to retry Shah. Whether that will happen remains unclear.
Robert Bickerstaff, the assistant district attorney assigned to the case, did not return a call from The Washington Post. But District Attorney Julia Slater said she will review the state Supreme Court’s decision before deciding whether to retry Shah, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
If Slater decides to not retry Shah, charges will be dismissed and she will be released from prison, said Katherine Dodd, Shah’s appeals attorney.
If prosecutors decide to retry, “we look forward to her having the opportunity to go back into court with full and fair presentation of all the evidence,” Dodd said. Best-case scenario for Shah would then be if the second jury finds her not guilty of all charges. The jurors would have the option to convict her of reckless conduct, in which case she would spend a year in jail at the most.
Prosecutors alleged that Shah had long neglected and starved Alejandra, pointing to evidence that the infant weighed only a little over 9 pounds when she should’ve been at least 12.5 pounds, court records say. A doctor testified during the trial that he instructed Shah to feed Alejandra 3 to 4 ounces of high-calorie formula every 3 to 4 hours, not just when she cried.
Before she was found dead, Alejandra was not fed for more than 12 hours, court records say.
Maurice Chen, who treated Alejandra, testified that in the months leading to her death, Alejandra should have been gaining more weight, about 20 to 30 grams a day, according to court records. But the infant had gained only 0.3 grams a day.
Prosecutors also argued that Shah should have noticed that her daughter was not gaining enough weight.
Shah’s defense attorney argued at trial that the baby’s death was accidental, as the medical examiner had concluded, and that testimony that Alejandra was gradually and intentionally starved was based on “junk science,” according to court records.
Shah’s attorney said that had Alejandra been showing signs of starvation, her father, Enrique Molina, who is a nurse and who was seeing the infant on most weekends, would have done something. Shah and Molina were not together at the time of Alejandra’s death.
The jury found Shah guilty of all charges in January 2013, after a trial that lasted four days. She was sentenced to life in prison.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Kristine Guerra
