A US mother who allegedly smothered her six-month-old son because she feared he had autism will not face a murder charge, according to a report.
Prosecutors said they doubt if they could prove Stephanie Rochester was sane at the time of the killing, the Daily Mail said.
The report said that the 35-year-old has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the death of her son Rylan.
Stephanie Rochester was accused of first-degree murder in the June 2010 smothering death of her son, Rylan, but she has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and will not have a jury trial
Friends said: “she was suffering from postnatal depression at the time of the 2010 killing”.
Rochester was accused of smothering her son with blankets as he lay in his cot.
An arrest warrant for the 2010 killing revealed that Rochester feared her son had autism and tried to suffocate him with a plastic bag at their home in Superior, Colorado.
When that failed she used blankets to end his life.
The arrest warrant revealed Rochester had wanted to kill herself but did not want to “burden” her husband with an autistic child.
Rochester was reported to have said at the time that “having an autistic child would financially and emotionally ruin her”. According to the Daily Mail, friends say “she had suffered from depression since the birth of her son”.
Following the ruling against a jury trial prosecution and defence lawyers will now meet to present the mother's insanity evidence to a judge.
Both a psychiatrist hired by the defence and a state psychiatrist appointed by the court have ruled she was legally insane at the time of the child's death.
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said: “Given the Court's ruling and the state of the evidence in the case at this time, I have determined that there is not sufficient admissible evidence for the prosecution to meet its burden of convincing a jury of 12 to reach a unanimous decision, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Stephanie Rochester was legally sane when she allegedly killed her infant son”.
She is likely to be committed to a mental hospital. Had she faced a first degree murder charged she would have been jailed for life. - Daily Mail