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Sentencing Pregnant Drug Addicts: Why the Child Endangerment Enhancement is not Appropriate

Carusello, Monica – 2016

Does being pregnant when you commit a crime make you more culpable than someone who is not pregnant? Accordingly to new and frightening precedent, the answer is yes. In July 2014, a District Court judge decided that Lacey Weld, a Tennessee woman, “should face a longer prison sentence because she was pregnant at the time she was involved in a [methamphetamine (“meth”)] manufacturing operation. (Author abstract)