The New Mexico Supreme Court has barred prosecutors from using police body camera footage in which a woman allegedly admitted she placed her newborn baby in a hospital trash can, ruling that the statements are protected by doctor-patient confidentiality.
Alexee Trevizo, who was 19 at the time of her 2023 arrest, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence after hospital staff discovered the baby boy and contacted authorities. In the recorded footage, she appeared to acknowledge to medical workers and her mother that she had put the newborn in the trash.
In a unanimous decision, the state’s highest court found that statements made in the hospital room while a police officer was present cannot be introduced at trial because they fell under the protection of the physician-patient privilege, according to People. The court also let stand a Fifth Judicial District Court ruling that excluded hospital surveillance video of Trevizo and any police body camera recordings from being used as evidence.
The body camera video showed Trevizo’s doctor entering the room with two officers before telling the then-high school cheerleader and her mother that a deceased newborn had been found in a trash can and that the discovery had to be reported.
Alexee Trevizo faced first-degree murder and evidence-tampering charges after hospital employees found her newborn son dead inside a trash can. (Artesia Police Department)
“I’m sorry, it came out of me. I didn’t know what to do,” Trevizo was heard saying on the footage after the doctor told her the baby had been located in the trash.
“I was scared,” she said, adding that the newborn “was not crying or nothing.”
When Trevizo’s mother learned a baby had been found in the trash can, she asked, “How big is the baby?” A nurse responded that the infant appeared to be full term, prompting Trevizo to repeat that “nothing was crying.”
Trevizo’s mother then asked her: “Where did you put the baby at? Tell me the truth. You put it in the bag?” Trevizo confirmed that she did put the newborn in the trash bag.
Police had not read Trevizo her Miranda rights before making the confession, but prosecutors argued that she did not need to be Mirandized since she was speaking to hospital staff in front of officers and not directly to any police.
The young woman was also receiving medical treatment when officers entered the room with body cameras.
“Despite her unresolved medical crisis, Dr. [Heather] 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,” the court said in an opinion written by Justice Michael E. Vigil.
Since Trevizo was “not given the opportunity to exclude anyone from the room before Dr. Vaskas discussed her condition in the presence of others” and in a “compromised medical condition,” the justices said that they “cannot conclude that Defendant’s waiver of her physician-patient privilege was voluntary.”
Trevizo, now 22, arrived at Artesia General Hospital for severe back pain on Jan. 27, 2023, when hospital staff began running tests and giving her morphine for the pain as they waited for her results.
The court ruled that the body camera footage cannot be used by prosecutors in the murder case because of doctor-patient confidentiality. (Artesia Police Department)
The teenager repeatedly denied to hospital staff that she was pregnant before running out of her hospital room and holding her backside on her way to the bathroom. Her mother followed her toward the bathroom and knocked several times on the locked door, waiting with hospital staff for around 20 minutes before the high school senior opened the door just as a nurse was about to unlock it.
After she opened the door, Trevizo was found cleaning up a heavy amount of blood on the floor. Hospital staff originally suspected the blood was from the woman attempting to terminate her pregnancy.
The bathroom had blood splattered on the wall, so hospital staff asked a janitor to clean it.
As the janitor was cleaning the bathroom, they noticed the trash felt heavier than expected and dug around until they discovered the newborn baby that was no longer breathing hidden inside. The janitor then told nurses of the discovery, and police were notified as required by law.
The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator later determined the newborn died by homicide, finding that the child died from entrapment after being placed and tied inside a plastic trash bag beneath bloody paper towels and other garbage. The autopsy report also said the child had air in his lungs and that there was evidence of a hemorrhage consistent with hypoxia.
Despite these findings, Trevizo has maintained that the baby was stillborn. She has also continued to claim that she did not realize she was pregnant until she gave birth to her child in the hospital bathroom.
Cleaning staff found the dead newborn hidden in the bathroom trash can. (Artesia Police Department)
The district attorney’s office filed charges against Trevizo based on the conversation captured on body camera footage as well as video taken from hospital security cameras that showed her in the hospital hallway entering and later leaving the bathroom. But that evidence is now inadmissible.
After her arrest on May 10, 2023, Trevizo was released from jail and allowed to finish her senior year of high school without an ankle monitor or house arrest while waiting for trial.
Trevizo attended prom and had planned to walk at her high school graduation while awaiting trial, but the school asked her not to attend.
She then attended New Mexico State University, where students launched a petition that received more than 30,000 signatures demanding she be banned from campus.
