B2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, JULY 31 , 2020
older children, as did many of
the other mothers she knew.
The jury convicted Morrison
of involuntary manslaughter.
She received a 20-year sentence,
which was suspended by the
trial court, and was put on
probation. Her conviction for
child neglect was upheld.
The office of Attorney General
Brian E. Frosh (D) declined to
comment Thursday on the rul-
ing.
Morrison’s attorney, Haley Li-
cha, an assistant public defend-
er, said the court majority was
concerned about opening the
door to prosecuting parents for
accidental injuries to their chil-
dren.
“When an accident takes the
life of a child in their parents’
care, do we need to punish that
parent, or is there a better way to
handle it?” she said.
Morrison, now 48, was devas-
tated, Licha said, and “is going to
be blaming herself for this for-
ever, but that doesn’t make it a
crime.”
[email protected]who was joined by Judges Rob-
ert N. McDonald and Joseph M.
Getty.
At her three-day trial in 2016,
Morrison testified that she
drank two 12-ounce beers and
about half of a 40-ounce bottle of
malt liquor during the virtual
happy hour to celebrate the start
of the 2013-2014 school year with
her friends in Virginia.
Her older daughter, who was 4
at the time and 7 when she
testified at her mother’s trial,
said her mother had rolled on
top of her baby sister. She tried
unsuccessfully to wake Morri-
son, who was in a “deep, deep
sleep,” her daughter testified.
Prosecutors argued that Mor-
rison engaged in a practice that
had been proven to be danger-
ous and had drank enough alco-
hol to effectively “pass out.”
But Morrison told the court
that co-sleeping was a tradition
in her family. She shared a bed
with her mother as a child, her
mother had done the same with
her grandmother, and Morrison
had done so with each of her fivesaid.
The court majority, Fentiman
said, was concerned about “the
unfairness of sending [Morri-
son] to prison given that it
wasn’t a clear risk.”
The dissenting judges in the
case agreed that co-sleeping
with an infant is not inherently
dangerous. But the combination
of drinking to the point of
“serious impairment,” they said,
“creates a substantial risk that
the parent will suffocate the
infant.”
It is not the court’s role, the
dissent said, to second-guess the
jury and its conclusion that
Morrison drank to the point of
“serious impairment” before get-
ting into bed with her infant and
4-year-old daughter.
“We are constrained to con-
clude that a rational juror could
have found that Ms. Morrison
went to bed seriously impaired
by alcohol and that she therefore
was grossly negligent by not
sleeping somewhere other than
next to [her infant] that night,”
wrote Judge Jonathan Biran,share a room with their babies,
but not the same bed. A decade
ago, Baltimore health officials
began promoting safe sleeping
practices with new parents to
reduce infant deaths, with the
message that infants should
sleep alone.
But the practice of co-sleeping
is popular, with 61.4 percent of
mothers reporting having
shared a bed with their babies in
a CDC survey.
Linda C. Fentiman, who has
taught criminal and health law
at Pace University’s law school,
said it is not common for parents
to be prosecuted in co-sleeping
deaths. Fentiman said her re-
search shows that when jurors,
judges and prosecutors assess
risk and try to answer the ques-
tion of what a reasonable person
should have done, they bring an
unconscious bias and tend to
hold mothers to a different stan-
dard.
“People expect women to be
more careful, and the ‘reason-
able mother’ ends up being pret-
ty close to Mother Teresa,” sheRICKY CARIOTI/WASHINGTON POST
Q ueen Washington feared the killing of her daughter, Stephanie Thomas, was driven by
hate or perhaps jealousy, by someone who knew her b ut didn’t want to accept who she was.MICHEL DU CILLE/THE WASHINGTON POST
Michelle Davis, the mother of slain transgender teen Ukea Davis, says knowing the name of
the man who killed her daughter is “ not adding any closure for the family.”wrote.
Morrison’s case in Baltimore,
which began after a virtual
“moms’ night out” in September
2013, came long before the coro-
navirus pandemic, stay-at-home
orders and subsequent explo-
sion of online happy hours. But
the legal battle over the actions
of a newborn’s mother socializ-
ing online resonates and revives
the fraught debate over co-sleep-
ing.
There are about 3,500 sleep-
related deaths of babies in the
United States each year, includ-
ing from sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS), accidental suf-
focation and deaths from un-
known causes, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
The American Academy of
Pediatrics encourages parents tophysical harm,” wrote Judge Mi-
chele D. Hotten, who was joined
by Chief Judge Mary Ellen Bar-
bera and Judges Shirley M. Watts
and Brynja M. Booth.
Although the government in-
troduced evidence that the saf-
est way for a baby to sleep is
alone in a crib or bassinet,
affirming Morrison’s conviction
“would potentially have a dispa-
rate effect on women in general,
and indeed women of color and
women of limited socioeconom-
ic means,” Watts wrote in a
concurring opinion.
“Certainly, anyone who co-
slept with a baby under circum-
stances similar to those in this
case would be at risk for convic-
tion on insufficient evidence in
any jurisdiction in the State,” she
RULING FROM B1
Conviction thrown out in
infant’s co-sleeping death
brought to justice?”
“It’s just upsetting hearing that... they have the person and the
person has not been brought to
justice,” she said. “It’s not adding
any closure for the family.”
Reginald Davis, Ukea Davis’s
uncle, said that for many years
authorities had posted fliers re-
questing information, and he
saved newspaper clippings relat-
ed to the deaths. But after a while,
the fliers and articles stopped.
He was relieved to hear the
suspect had been identified. He
had a lways wondered whether t he
person who killed his niece was
someone known to the family.
“It’s good to know anything,” he
said. “To know that person is not
just out here, causing harm to
people.”
Violence against transgender
or gender nonconforming people
continues, with at least 25 people
across t he country k illed so f ar this
year, according to the Human
Rights Campaign. Since the group
began tracking these deaths in
2013, advocates have never seen
such a high n umber at t his point in
the year. The vast majority of
transgender people killed have
been Black transgender women.
Last summer, the American Medi-
cal Association deemed the pat-
tern of violence against transgen-
der people an “epidemic.”
Thomas and Davis had birth-
days a round the same time of year,
so they would often celebrate
them together.
One of their childhood friends,
Lakeisha Moore, 41, said the last
time they celebrated t he t wo birth-
days, Thomas “did it big.”
“She wanted everybody to dress
up,” Moore said.
She was relieved to hear author-
ities solved the case, but, she said,
“it took too long.”
“I’m just trying to figure out
why, why would you take their
lives like that?” Moore said. “Why
would you hate a person that
much you had to take their life?
That’s one answer we will never,
ever get.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
Julie Tate contributed to this report.excuse their actions by claiming
they were s urprised by a t ransgen-
der woman. “When all transgen-
der p eople get killed that’s the first
thing they say,” Washington said.
“This is the defense they always
use.”
Davis’s mother, Michelle Davis,
54, said she also wants to know
more about the case.
“I just want to know, who was
this person? Was there another
person?” she said. “He’s been de-
ceased s ince 2017, but w hat was h e
doing since 200 2? Why wasn’t hehate, o r perhaps out of jealousy, by
someone who knew her daughter
but didn’t want to accept who she
was.
In cases of transgender homi-
cides, attackers sometimes seek torienced bullying in the neighbor-
hood because of who she was, her
mother said, and was once hit in
the head with a brick.
She has always felt certain her
daughter was targeted in an act ofscription o f the vehicle the s uspect
had been driving.
Washington still lives in the
same home in Southeast Washing-
ton that she lived in that summer
in 2002, two blocks from the spot
where Thomas and Davis were
found in a Toyota Camry, each
with at least 10 bullet wounds.
Washington wishes she knew
more about the suspect, including
whether he knew her daughter,
who had been presenting as fe-
male ever since she was 12 or 13
years old. Thomas had often expe-since the days and weeks after the
killings.
“That was malicious, intended
and planned,” Budd said. “It was
every bit a hate crime.”
Police identified the suspected
assailant as Michael Dupree Price,
who was 36 when he was fatally
shot in May 2017 o n Benning Road
SE. No suspect has been arrested
in that killing, which police be-
lieve is unrelated to the shootings
of the women in 2002.
Court records show Price had
been convicted in D.C. in at least
two domestic assault cases i n 200 1
involving different girlfriends,
and of a robbery and using a fire-
arm in a crime of violence in 2003
in Maryland. He was sentenced to
seven years in prison for that
crime.
Price’s sister and a girlfriend,
the mother of one of his children,
disputed the police account. The
girlfriend said he was with her the
night of the killings. She said she
remembers because police ques-
tioned her about the case before
and after Price died, and even, she
said, dangled the $50,000 reward.
The girlfriend said it’s “mighty
strange how this is all coming out
once he’s deceased.”
She and the sister, who did not
want their names published be-
cause they fear for their safety,
complained that police spread
Price’s name so often that they
think someone knew it was what
authorities wanted to hear.
Authorities s aid the case involv-
ing Thomas, 19, and Davis, 18,
broke open earlier this year when
Detective Danny Whalen, a 37-
year veteran in the homicide unit,
was reviewing the old file and
found a letter discussing some-
body who had information about
the case.
No one had previously followed
up on that tip, Newsham said, and
it led Whalen to two new wit -
nesses. T he chief s aid those people
independently told Whalen that
Price had “essentially told him
what he did.” Newsham said de-
tails were consistent with infor-
mation that had not been made
public. They also provided a de-
SLAYINGS FROM B1
D.C. police identify killer of 2 transgender teens in 2002
STEPHANIE K. KUYKENDAL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Rochelle Davis, Ukea Davis’s sister, cries as she is comforted by Michael Davis, Ukea’s uncle, d uring a vigil in r emembrance of Ukea and
Stephanie Thomas in Southeast Washington in 2002. The killings remained unsolved until this year.“I just want to know, who was this person?...
He’s been deceased since 2017,
but what was he doing since 2002?”
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