Lawyer Requests the Fetus of Pregnant Woman Accused of Killing Her Friend in an Uber Be Released from Prison

by Xara Aziz
Credit: Miami Dade Corrections and GoFundMe

The lawyer of a pregnant woman who shot and killed her friend in an Uber after a night of partying together in Miami is requesting that a judge allows her unborn fetus to be released from prison.

Last July, Natalia Harrell was charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of her friend Gladys Borcela. Harrell, 24, was six weeks pregnant at the time and has been in jail awaiting trial ever since.  

But her lawyer, William M. Norris, argues that the actions of the mother should not hinder the future of her unborn child. He says jail staff has neglected to provide his client with the proper prenatal care needed for a successful delivery and filed an emergency petition last week requesting the immediate release of the fetus.

“She put her 3 beautiful children first and now they have to grow up and only hear of memories of their beautiful mother,” wrote the victim’s mother, Yvette Rivera, on a GoFundMe page. “I don’t even know how to tell my grand baby’s someone took their mother away from us.”

Harrell is currently eight months pregnant and her trial is scheduled for April. If convicted, she faces life in prison.

“An unborn child has rights independent of its mother, even though it’s still in the womb,” Norris told The Washington Post. “The unborn child has been deprived of due process of law in this incarceration. You simply have to have the unborn child as a factor in the equation.”

According to NBC 6 South Florida, the suspect said her last visit to the OB-GYN was in October of last year. She alleged that the Miami-Dade Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where she is being held, has not provided her with the proper vitamins, liquids of nutritional food needed for proper fetal development. She further added that when she was just a few months pregnant, jail staff left her in a corrections van without air conditioning, which caused the temperature to rise to over 100 degrees, she said. They didn’t open the vehicle’s door until she banged on the walls asking for air.

“Our interest is in the health of the unborn child at this point because months have passed with no prenatal care,” Norris said.

But Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has filed a motion to dismiss Norris’ request. According to the AG’s office, Norris has not been able to support his assertion of neglect.

The attorney is relying on a “writ of habeas corpus,” which “orders the custodian of an individual in custody to produce the individual before the court to make an inquiry concerning his or her detention,” according to the U.S Marshals Service.

“Obviously, I have concerns for the health and wellbeing of my baby,” Michael O’Brien, the father of the unborn child, told NBC 6 South Florida“I don’t want the baby to be born prematurely or low birth weight.”

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