"Newborn Jane" CRAIG (2009) - New Orleans LA

NEW ORLEANS - The confession by a mother accused of drowning her newborn daughter in Lake Pontchartrain will be used in court.
22-year-old Ciara Craig is charged with second-degree murder for the death.
Her baby was found in a garbage bag on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain in February 2009.
Her attorneys argued that Craig was coerced into a confession
because she was not allowed medical treatment before she was
interviewed, and they claim she was still bleeding from giving birth.
Kenner Police say Craig never asked for treatment and waived her right to an attorney.
Craig is in jail on a $500,000 dollar bond. The trial date is set for March 15.
* * * *

Two weeks before she's scheduled to
stand trial, a Metairie woman accused of drowning her newborn in Lake
Pontchartrain last year failed to convince a judge Friday that
detectives improperly obtained a confession and cannot be used against
her.

Ciara Craig, 22, would spend the rest of her life in
prison if she is convicted of second-degree murder of her newborn on
Feb. 10, 2009. The trial is scheduled to begin March 15, before Judge
Robert Pitre of the 24th Judicial District Court.

Her attorney, Morris Reed Sr., argued that Kenner
detectives interviewed Craig before allowing her to seek medical
treatment after she gave birth, and that the officers coerced a
confession. He argued Craig was bleeding from giving birth during the
police interviews. As such, Reed argued, the confession should never be
used as evidence in a trial.

"You knew that she had gone through some type of child birth?" Reed asked Kenner Police Detective Charlotte Synigal on Friday.

"Yes," said Synigal, whose interview led to Craig's confession.

Synigal testified that Craig "thought she felt a heartbeat prior to putting the baby into the water."

Reed previously has suggested the child was
stillborn. Assistant District Attorney Laura Schneidau has said autopsy
results show the baby died from asphyxia by drowning.

Synigal acknowledged that Craig received medical
attention from paramedics and was taken to the LSU Interim Public
Hospital, but after 2 1/2 hours of interview at the Kenner Police
Department. Craig had surrendered amid a search by detectives of area
hotels for the person who placed the baby in the lake.

But while Craig cried at times during the interview,
Synigal described her as "coherent" when she voluntarily waived her
rights to remain silent and to have an attorney. Craig also said "she
was OK" during the interview and never asked for medical treatment, the
detective testified.

"At any point in time, she could have asked for that," Synigal said.

The detective denied telling Craig that if she
talked, she'd get probation and be released from police custody that
day. Craig, dressed in orange jail clothing and sitting with her
attorney, silently shook her head.

She is held in the Jefferson Parish Correctional
Center in lieu of a $500,000 bond. Reed has said other inmates have
beaten Craig during her incarceration.

It was Reed's second attempt to have evidence in the
case tossed out, after a similar hearing Jan. 29. Like Friday's
request, the earlier effort was rejected by Pitre, freeing Schneidau to
use evidence and a confession at trial.

Authorities say Craig got pregnant during a
one-night stand and hid the pregnancy from her family. She gave birth
in her home before driving the infant to the lake.

Poster's Note: Here's the original story from one year ago

Pregnant from a one-night stand with a man whose name she doesn't
know, Ciara Craig sought an abortion, then considered adoption, before
casting her newborn daughter into Lake Pontchartrain, Kenner police
said Wednesday.
Officers filed paperwork to book the 21-year-old Metairie woman with
first-degree murder, even as she remains hospitalized under police
guard.
Investigators said they decided to book Craig with Louisiana's most
serious criminal charge without waiting for a complete autopsy report,
which could provide evidence of whether the infant was alive or dead
when she was thrown into the lake. Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway
said first-degree murder is an appropriate charge because Craig told
police that she detected the infant's breathing and heartbeat after
giving birth at home alone.
"By her own admission, the baby was alive when she placed it in the lake, " Caraway said.
Craig, accompanied by relatives, surrendered to police Tuesday
night, saying she threw her daughter into the lake that afternoon
because she didn't want to raise a child and she didn't want her
parents to know she had been pregnant, police said.

There was no answer to a knock at the door of Craig's house
Wednesday. A woman who answered a telephone registered to Craig's
mother spoke only briefly with a reporter. "Our family is trying to
grieve right now, " she said. "It's not a good time."
Craig told investigators the pregnancy resulted from a single
incident with a man she doesn't know. At some point recently, she
decided to abort her pregnancy but was told it was too advanced. She
then investigated putting the baby up for adoption.
Caraway said he didn't know whether Craig was aware of
Louisiana's safe haven law, which lets parents anonymously surrender a
newborn to certain public safety or medical representatives without
being arrested. But he said, "She knew her options."
Alarmed by the case, state government officials vowed to launch
an advertising campaign to educate the public about the law. Social
Services Secretary Kristy Nichols said the effort will involve a Web
site, billboards, brochures, and radio and television spots.
"It is important to enhance the public's understanding of the
law, " Nichols said. "We want to avoid a crisis like the one in
Kenner."
The Legislature adopted the safe haven law in 2000 in hopes of
stopping parents from abandoning or killing unwanted infants. In the
first three years, not a single parent invoked it; 11 newborns were
abandoned, seven of them to die.
The law was rewritten in 2003, followed by a publicity campaign
touting it as an alternative for troubled parents, and since then eight
infants have been handed over to authorities for eventual adoption.
Nichols said she hopes for more changes, including a
requirement that safe haven sites such as police stations and hospitals
post signs identifying them as such. She also said she wants to explore
expanding the law to include churches as safe havens.
Craig graduated from Xavier Preparatory School in New Orleans
in 2006. She studied at Delgado Community College, said Erica Bates,
who took a college and career success skills class with Craig there in
the fall of 2007.
She recently moved into a single-story yellow house on Monett
Street in Metairie's Bunche Village subdivision, neighbors said. Bates
said Craig worked at Old Navy in The Esplanade mall.
After delivering the child at home, Craig gathered two plastic
garbage bags and two bath towels and drove with the infant to Kenner's
Laketown park, police said. Witnesses there saw a woman walk to the
water's edge, throw something into the water, return to the car and
drive away. A bag and a bloodied towel were found nearby.
The other bag and towel, and the placenta, were found in a
commercial garbage bin at a River Ridge apartment complex two miles
from Craig's house.
Neighbors said they knew little about the family, who they said
moved to Monett Street a few months ago. One of them, Sandy Johnson,
expressed shock at what happened Tuesday in the house and, afterward,
at the lakefront: "Lord, what's happening to the world today?"

A state judge has postponed to July the trial for a 22-year-old Metairie woman
charged in the death of her newborn in Lake Pontchartrain in Kenner.Ciara Craig had been scheduled to stand trial this week
on a charge of second-degree murder. She is accused of giving birth in her
Metairie home and then putting the newborn in the lake on Feb. 10, 2009.
Kenner police said Craig admitted the child was alive
when she watched the body sink below the surface. She turned herself in to
detectives about five hours after officers found the body.

State District Judge Robert Pitre granted attorney Morris Reed's request to
postpone the trial.

The trial is now set to begin during the week of July 19.

July 17th 2010
WDSU.com reports from Gretna Louisiana a motion to continue the trial of
a Metairie woman who is accused of dumping her newborn infant into Lake
Ponchartrain on Feburary 10, 2009 is probably going to be delay the
start of her trial. Ciara Craig 22, Metairie resident gave birth to her
infant in her home and allegedy dumped the infant into Lake Ponchatrain
is scheduled to stand trial on Monday. Assistant District Attorney Steve
Wimberly said Friday that Ciara changed her plea from not guilty to
guilty by reason of insanity. Wimberly said state Judge Robert Pitre was
out of town and will make his ruling on Monday. Craig's attorney Morris
B. Reed said his client was suffering from depression, postpartum
depression from being raped when she was 14 years old when she allegedly
dumped her infant into Lake Ponchatrain.