June 19, 2017
An appeals court upheld the conviction of Emile Weaver, who is serving life in prison without parole after being convicted of killing her newborn baby.
She was found guilty in May 2016 of aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and two counts of tampering with evidence. She was accused of placing her newborn baby in a small garbage can shortly after giving birth on April 22, 2015, and then wrapping it in a trash bag and leaving it outside her sorority house on campus. The baby died of asphyxiation, according to the preliminary autopsy report.
She was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus an additional four years, to run consecutively, for gross abuse of a corpse.
In her appeal, Weaver's attorney, Nikki Trautman Baszynski of Columbus, argued that her life sentence was disproportionate, that the trial court made a mistake when it imposed her sentence and that her conviction for gross abuse of a corpse was not supported by evidence.
In the decision, judges from the Fifth District Court of Appeals stated they did not have jurisdiction to review Weaver's life sentence for aggravated murder. According to the Ohio Revised Code, sentences imposed for murder or aggravated murder are not subject to appellate review.
Baszynski argued that "her actions in killing her own newborn child should not be equated to a danger to the public" based on scientific articles that have apparently concluded that people who commit neonaticide are unlikely to reoffend, the court opinion stated.
But the district court judges found that making that argument would ignore Weaver's other actions the night her daughter died, "not the least of which include her blatant disregard for law enforcement and the justice system via her attempts to dispose of the baby and other evidence of the murder, and the wide range of psychological repercussions her behaviors likely have had on the campus community and her sorority sisters, particularly those who made the grisly discovery of the garbage bag," the opinion stated.
Baszynski also argued that because the baby died after being placed in the garbage bag, Weaver was not guilty of gross abuse of a corpse. The judges disagreed.
"We hold reasonable jurors could thus conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant foreseeably created the circumstances under which the baby’s subsequently deceased body was inevitably subjected to treatment considered outrageous to reasonable community sensibilities," the opinion stated.