Last week, Maryland's highest court dismissed the conviction of now 48-year-old Muriel Morrison, whose 4-month-old daughter died in a 2013 co-sleeping accident. Morrison drank beer that evening before settling in bed with her daughter Ilzaryah for night. At some point she accidentally rolled over and suffocated her daughter while she slept.
The tragic incident happened on September 2, 2013.
Police arrived about 8:30 a.m. after getting a call about an unresponsive child, WBAL reported at the time.
According to court documents, Morrison discovered the infant cold and blue when she woke up at 7:45 a.m. Her 4-year-old had woken up first and noticed mom was asleep on top of her baby sister and tried, unsuccessfully, to wake her. When she did awake, she performed CPR and was frantic for help.
A roommate who lived with Morrison, Ilzaryah, and Morrison's other 4-year-old daughter told the news station that the mom shared a bed with her children.
The night before, Morrison drank beer during a virtual "moms' night out" happy hour on Facebook.
She finished her drinks on the porch while her kids slept, the Washington Post reported. She changed Ilzaryah's diaper, pumped her breast milk, took out the trash, and locked the doors to her house before crawling into bed with her children, including the baby.
The next morning, she woke up to Ilzaryah listless and her lips blue.
"She said, 'I was drunk asleep and I rolled over on her,'" Morrison's roommate at the time, Nikki, told WBAL.
"She came outside running down the street screaming that the baby was dead, so we called the ambulance twice," family friend Joe Goodman said. He called police while Morrison rushed outside in a panic.
"She was a happy baby — always smiling when she got up in the morning," Goodman said.
The baby was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital but pronounced dead upon arrival, according to court documents.
At the time, the baby's death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation, and the mother wasn't initially arrested.
Later, Morrison was charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and neglect of a minor, stemming from the death of her infant, according to a court of appeals document.
During the three-day trial in 2016, she explained to jurors what happened that night.
Morrison testified that she drank two 12-ounce beers and about half of a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor during the happy hour with friends to celebrate the start of the new school year.
Her older daughter, who was 7 at the time of the trial, testified as well and told the court that her mother rolled on top of her sister. She tried to wake Morrison who was in a "deep, deep sleep."
Prosecutors in the case used that testimony to claim that Morrison "pass[ed] out" and participated in co-sleeping, which is known for being dangerous.
The mom told the court that co-sleeping was a tradition in her family.
She claimed that she shared a bed with her mother as a child, and her mother shared a bed with her grandmother. Morrison has five older children, all of whom she co-slept with, and she pointed out that many other mothers that she knew also practiced co-sleeping.
The jury wasn't sympathetic, and the mom received a 20-year prison sentence. Her sentence was suspended by trial court, however, and she was later put on probation.
On Thursday, the Maryland Court of Appeals threw out Morrison's 20-year prison sentence.
The case was divided along gender lines. The majority of the votes to dismiss the sentence were from women on the court who ruled there wasn't enough evidence to prove that Morrison was "grossly negligent." They felt that they were not prepared to criminalize co-sleeping.
"Co-sleeping with a four-month old after consuming beer does not necessarily pose such an inherent risk of death or serious physical harm," Judge Michele D. Hotten wrote in her judgment along with Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera and Judges Shirley M. Watts and Brynja M. Booth.
Hotten noted that Morrison's conviction "would potentially have a disparate effect on women in general, and indeed women of color and women of limited socioeconomic means."
"Certainly, anyone who co-slept with a baby under circumstances similar to those in this case would be at risk for conviction on insufficient evidence in any jurisdiction in the State," she continued.
Co-sleeping is a risky practice that is generally not recommended by health officials.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are about 3,500 sleep-related deaths among infants each year.
In addition, the Journal of American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that co-sleeping "should be avoided at all times." That's particularly true for "bed-sharing with a term normal-weight infant younger than four months and infants born preterm and/or with low birth weigh."
The practice puts infants at increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, accidental suffocation, and accidental strangulation.
When it comes to the legal process, Linda C. Fentiman told the Washington Post that women tend to be judged unfairly.
Fentiman, who has taught criminal and health law at Pace University’s law school, explained to the newspaper that during her research she found that judges, jurors, and prosecutors often hold women to a different standard than men.
"People expect women to be more careful, and the 'reasonable mother' ends up being pretty close to Mother Teresa," she said.
The judges who recently ruled in Morrison's case did not feel that co-sleeping with an infant is inherently dangerous but noted that it was Morrison's impairment that put her child at risk for being suffocated.
Haley Licha, an assistant public defender, told the court last week that the court majority was concerned about setting the precedent that parents should be prosecuted for accidental injuries to their children.
"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?" Licha asked before noting that even today Morrison still feels regret for her actions.
She "is going to be blaming herself for this forever," Licha said, "but that doesn't make it a crime."
