Left: Alexee Trevizo (Artesia Police Department); Right: Police body-worn camera footage showing Trevizo in the hospital after giving birth (Law&Crime).
New Mexico prosecutors will not be allowed to use statements a woman made in an emergency room after she allegedly killed her newborn by placing the baby in a hospital bathroom trash can, the state’s highest court ruled Thursday.
In a unanimous opinion, the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld a trial court’s decision to suppress evidence gathered by police, finding that the information was obtained in violation of the physician-patient privilege.
Alexee Trevizo, now 22, was charged when she was 19 in May 2023 in connection with the January 2023 birth and death of the newborn.
Since being arrested, Trevizo has appeared in court only one time — in August 2023 — when her attorney, Gary C. Mitchell, persuaded the trial judge to suppress the disputed evidence.
The justices emphasized that a valid waiver of the privilege requires, among other things, “the mental and physical capacity” to make that waiver. In Trevizo’s case, the court found she did not have that capacity because of her medical condition at the time.
The court sharply faulted the way the physician approached Trevizo in the hospital room:
Defendant presented at the emergency room in excruciating pain, was administered numerous medications, including narcotics, at unknown doses, she gave birth, and she suffered ongoing life-threatening blood loss. Despite her unresolved medical crisis, Dr. Vaskas, without authorization, ambushed Defendant, bringing with her two-armed officers who stood in the doorway of her hospital room, and disclosed her personal medical information to all persons in the room without warning.
“Defendant was not given the opportunity to exclude anyone from the room before Dr. Vaskas discussed her condition in the presence of others,” the opinion concludes. “Considering this sudden unauthorized disclosure, coupled with Defendant’s compromised medical condition, under the totality of the circumstances, we cannot conclude that Defendant’s waiver of her physician-patient privilege was voluntary.”
The post Woman accused of killing and dumping newborn in hospital trash was ‘ambushed’ by her doctor and ‘lacked capacity’ to waive confidentiality, state supreme court rules first appeared on Law & Crime.
