Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teen Accused of Dumping Baby in Trash Gets Win in Court

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I'm sorry about this, but in terms of delivering a baby and it looked like you tried to hide it, we do have to have the police involved. And that thing was crying. It came out with that thing. I know, I know. But the baby's going to have to be taken for autopsy and there'll be an investigator and everything. I'm really sorry, guys. That body camera footage of New Mexico teenager Alexi Treviso went viral after she was accused of killing her newborn baby. But right now, the judge presiding over her case says prosecutors

Starting point is 00:00:45 cannot use that video against her. Treviso's lawyer is here with what it means for the case. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Alexi Treviso faces serious charges for the death of her newborn son in January 2023. Her trial was scheduled to begin later this month, but that's not happening. Prosecutors are appealing a ruling from the judge presiding over her case that suppressed the body camera footage recorded by police and much of what happened at the hospital. Trevisa was in the hospital under a doctor's care. Her attorney, Gary Mitchell, successfully argued that that footage was privileged and that the doctor was acting as an agent of the police. Take a look. We discovered a dead baby in the bathroom. Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. He came out of me and I didn't know what to do.

Starting point is 00:01:40 Lexi, I told you about this. I just asked you, baby, to tell me the truth. It was not prior to my death. What did you do to it? Okay, stop right here. Stop. Stop. Number one priority, guys. Number one priority is she just had a baby. I don't know if she's delivered the placenta. She's bleeding significantly. I've spoken to the obstetrician at Lovelace.

Starting point is 00:02:00 They want her up there as soon as possible. I need your permission to transfer her for medical. She's 19. Oh, you're right. But she is a student, too. She's still 19 years old. You're right. She used to, I'm sorry, I forgot.

Starting point is 00:02:13 She's 19. Keep having me. You need to, to make sure that you're safe, I need to send you to Loveless to labor delivery. Will you please agree to that? Yes. Yes. Okay. Very good.

Starting point is 00:02:25 I'm going to that? Yes. Yes. I will. Okay, great. I'm going to work on that. In terms, I'm sorry about this, but in terms of delivering a baby and it looked like you tried to hide it, we do have to have the police involved. And that thing was crying. It came out with that thing. I know, I know. But the baby's going to have to be taken for autopsy and be an investigator and everything. I'm really sorry, guys. I'm sorry.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Like, how big is the baby? It's full term. What? Nine months? Letty was crying. Lexi, have you watched the news of the girls, what they do to their babies and what they go to jail? I was crying. So you saw Alexi Trevisa's mother talking with her there in the body camera footage. Well, the prosecutor had argued at a hearing nearly a year ago that Alexi Trevisa's mother being present meant that there wasn't any privilege.

Starting point is 00:03:23 So the body camera footage wasn't improper. She came with her mother. She allowed her mother to be present. The court would be familiar that a patient has a right to not have other people in their room. They ask if it's okay if that person stays. That's normal treatment to stay with Samet. So, Your Honor, we believe there are three different things going on here. And for defense to lump it all in and say it's all privilege before the court, we would disagree. And so we don't believe there is a privilege. But the judge disagreed, and now the prosecutor is appealing the judge's ruling to New Mexico's Supreme Court.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Here's Santa Fe defense attorney John Day on the dispute. This is the prosecution's effort to salvage their case. If they're not successful, it's a very difficult case to take to trial because the attorney for the defendant, who's actually an incredibly well-regarded old school criminal defense attorney here in New Mexico, a guy named Gary Mitchell. He goes to trial wearing basically cowboy jackets, cowboy shirts, cowboy boots, and he's an old time, good old boy country lawyer. And he's incredibly successful and incredibly skilled. What he's done is he convinced the district judge to exclude basically every piece of evidence that was obtained from the girl the moment she went into the hospital

Starting point is 00:04:53 on the grounds of doctor-patient privilege. The defendant's lawyer argued successfully that everything that she did once she crossed the threshold of the hospital should be privileged because she was there seeking medical treatment. New Mexico, like a lot of jurisdictions, has a very strong physician patient privilege law. There's a lot of background, a lot of case law upholding that. Defense lawyer Gary Mitchell has done is successfully argued that everything should be suppressed from the moment this teenage girl entered the hospital until the moment she left. And if the prosecution can't get the Supreme Court to overturn that, their case has been gutted for the most part. Day says the prosecution may have a point with their arguments. The prosecution's argument, they do have some pretty fair arguments to make here. For example, they're claiming that the privilege was waived, the doctor-patient privilege was waived because a lot of the statements that the defendant made were in the presence of the patient, the nurse and the patient or other type of privileges,

Starting point is 00:06:10 lawyer, client privilege, therapist, client, patient privilege. Of course, there's the clergy privilege as well. But normally it does only apply if it's the two parties to the privilege who are in the conversation. So it's going to be up to the state Supreme Court to say, well, if the girl's mother was in the room, does that extinguish the privilege or are there exceptions when she's seeking medical treatment? So it's going to be a very interesting argument at the Supreme Court, especially if they do allow oral argument. I would like to be in the audience for this one. Ultimately, the New Mexico Supreme Court will have the final say. Treviso maintains the baby, who was later named Alex Fierro, was stillborn at Artesia Hospital and that she gave birth in the bathroom and then placed the infant in the trash can. There's a separate civil suit pending

Starting point is 00:06:56 against the hospital in which Treviso claims the drugs she was given, including morphine for back pain, caused the baby's death. Treviso also claimed she didn't know she was pregnant. I cover some really terribly sad and difficult cases here on Crime Fix, but I'm able to do that because of sponsors like City Lips. City Lips is a lip plumper, and it's made my lips actually look 10 years younger. I'm on camera all the time, so I always need to look my best. City Lips is not like those painful lip plumpers that sting and burn. It actually gives you fuller, healthier, and younger-looking lips. I used it for two weeks, once in the morning and once at night, and let me tell you, I've noticed a big difference.

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Starting point is 00:08:17 That's promo code LAW15 for 15% off of your order. And Gary Mitchell represents Alexi Treviso in this case. Gary, you won a pretty big motion on this. Now the prosecution is appealing the judge's ruling. So tell us where things sit right now. It looks like you're feeling pretty comfortable and pretty confident that this case, at least the state's case, is falling apart? Well, it is. It is because they violated the doctor-patient privilege and they violated Miranda, which most people are familiar with, trying to talk to somebody without telling them about their constitutional rights. And the judge ruled that certain statements would not be admissible and certain evidence would not be

Starting point is 00:09:05 admissible the state has an automatic appeal in the state of new mexico to our supreme court and they've taken that the supreme court put it on the general calendar all that means is that we all have to write briefs which the state's brief is due in fe, ours is due in November, and then the state can reply to ours. So I expect the court before Christmas will have all the briefing and then can reach a decision. But it's a huge case because it affects women's rights so much because New Mexico is a blue state. We have, we're bordered by Texas for a lot of our border and Arizona where women haven't been treated as equally

Starting point is 00:09:55 as they're treated in New Mexico. So this issue really centers around whether or not we're going to start letting police officers and law enforcement and the government talk to doctors about women's reproductive issues. So it doesn't matter whether it's a Lexi or whether it's another woman that goes into a hospital or seeks help. If the state is allowed to go in there and find out what kind of help they're getting,

Starting point is 00:10:25 that's just flat wrong. And it's a huge issue. I expect we're going to have some other people, amici, as we call them, or amicus briefs, written by other groups representing policy issues, especially for women. The state maintains that there really wasn't privilege here. I mean, obviously, Alexi is in a hospital bed. She's in a stretcher. She's there with back pain. She's pumped full of medication. But they're saying, you know, her mom was there. So privilege was waived. But obviously, the judge in the case, the judge presiding, didn't buy that argument. What is your response to that? Because this was discussed last summer.

Starting point is 00:11:09 I remember covering this motion hearing. But mom was there. Mom is in shock, obviously, that there was a full-term baby boy, you know, found in a trash can in the hospital. So how does mom, in your view, being present, not waive the privilege there? Well, first of all, mom shouldn't have been there. The doctor should have said, listen, we need to talk to, she's 19, we need to talk to her alone. And they should have asked if she excused herself. And at the hospital that I am affiliated with, we do that. We say, listen, if it's an adult, mom doesn't have a right to be here, neither does dad.

Starting point is 00:11:51 So we do that a lot. And that's to protect the privacy of the young person or the privacy of the person. I mean, a lot of us don't. It doesn't matter how much we love our parents or love our spouse or whatever, there's some things that we wish to keep very confidential with a doctor. And the doctor shouldn't have allowed it to begin with. And then this didn't come about because the mom was there. This came about because a doctor decided she was going to insist that police officers be there, and that she was going to talk to them and violate the privilege to begin with.

Starting point is 00:12:30 So it had nothing to do with mom at the very beginning. It had to do with medical personnel violating the privilege, inviting police officers in, and then police officers deciding, well, we're just going to make an arrest here and we're going to tell her that she's detained so she's not free to go. And that's the way we're going to handle this. It was messed up all the way around. It really was. Gary, I do find it curious, though, because, I mean, as a physician, they are mandatory reporters. I mean, they would, if a baby is found in the trash can in the bathroom of the hospital, I mean, they would be required to call the police, wouldn't they?

Starting point is 00:13:13 I mean, you're treating a patient and then she goes to their bathroom. I mean, it's a horrible thing. I mean, the baby is born. Lexi says the baby was stillborn you know the state is arguing that it was that the baby was not and then the baby sound in the trash can I mean they are required to call the police so in your view how should that have been handled they should have just called the police and but then not brought the body cameras in? I mean, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:13:45 Where do you, where's the line there? Oh, I can handle that real easy. It's a real easy investigation. You call the police, you report that you had a child born, a baby born, that the child is not alive, and if the police choose to investigate, they can, but that there are certain privileges that you have with the patient, and that the patient is in distress. Obviously, the doctor thought she was in distress enough that she ordered an air vac by helicopter

Starting point is 00:14:19 from the hospital in Artesia to the hospital in Roswell for full care because they don't render that care apparently in artesia anymore so there's a number of ways you can handle that and if police wanted to get there and go get search warrants they can try to get search warrants they can find out a lot of information uh from the deceased child uh dna this sort of thing. They can make those comparisons. But as for talking to people about what did this patient say and getting into the privilege, they don't have a right to do that. Police do investigations. I like to point out police do investigations all the time when people have lawyers,

Starting point is 00:15:02 but that doesn't mean they can violate attorney-client privilege. It's no different here. So without any of that information, what happens to this case? I mean, we still have, in your view, I mean, obviously you have a client to represent, but we still had a baby, an autopsy was conducted. You know, your contention is that the drugs given to Alexi caused the baby's death or contributed to the baby's death. So if we don't have the statements and things of that nature coming into the trial, does the case just go away in your view or is it resolved by plea? Where do you see this going? I don't see it resolved by plea, first of all, because I don't think we did anything wrong. My client went to the only place she could get help. She went to the hospital. That's what everybody would think that she should do. And she did everything that the nurses and doctors

Starting point is 00:15:59 required her to do and everything people were telling her to do. Now the other the other matter is is that the state's not going to have certain evidence that they can introduce. For example all the video film and and all the stuff that should have been confidential and all the testing and this sort of thing should have been confidential. So can they make a case otherwise? I don't think they can but that doesn't mean they're not going to try. They can make a case otherwise? I don't think they can, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try. They can make a case by saying, listen, we have this child that wasn't born alive. Can they say that the child was born alive? We can have a big argument among experts about that. Was the child in such a state that without immediate medical help, the child wouldn't have survived?

Starting point is 00:16:43 Or could the child have survived that's another big issue among experts so we can we can have those battles but as far all the things that took place with my client and her comments and her lab tests and and the videotape that was made i mean i was shocked when i saw that they videotaped people going into the emergency room and people being in the emergency room. I mean, what's going on with that? I mean, there's nothing secret anymore. There's nothing privileged anymore. Just think about that.

Starting point is 00:17:20 If you go see a doctor, should everything that that doctor does to you be videotaped? I mean, what kind of craziness is that for anybody? I don't care whether you're a 19-year old female going into a hospital or whether you're a 74-year-old man going into a hospital. I mean, some of us like to have some privacy in our life. We don't all live in glass houses. How is Alexi right now? We know she was going to college. So what is she up to? I mean, it's summertime, classes are probably getting ready to start if they haven't already back there in New Mexico. Well, she's trying to go to college by taking things, by not being actually physically on campus and doing as much as you can through the internet,

Starting point is 00:18:09 this sort of thing. She's trying to do that only because there was such an uproar or petition that from a large number of people that didn't want her on campus. And so we've tried to avoid that. We've tried to keep her away from everybody. She's lived a real life where she's by herself a lot or she's with her family a lot and nowhere else. So she's just trying to wait this out until we have the trial and at the same time continue with their education as best she can. It's really, I mean, it's shocking how

Starting point is 00:18:49 vicious people are. I'm just stunned by how, in this type of case, how deliberate people have been and how brutal people have been in their comments regarding her and things that went on. And I appreciate the fact that it was a baby. I understand that very, very well. But I also understand that women have miscarriages a lot. That's not an unusual situation, that children sometimes aren't born alive or children die immediately afterwards. That's just a part of life that we have to go through. And I understand that, but on the other hand, the reaction of people has been difficult for her and for anybody else to understand.

Starting point is 00:19:39 Social media is a, especially with the internet, social media is a nasty, nasty place. And yes, when it comes to a baby, it gets people very, very fired up. Well, we will keep an eye on this. Gary Mitchell, we will keep an eye on what the Supreme Court decides and as this moves through the process. Thank you so much. Gary Mitchell Thank you for having me. Have a beautiful day.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Jeanette Levy And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teen Accused of Dumping Baby in Trash Gets Win in Court

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