Law&Crime Sidebar - Teen Accused of Dumping Baby in Trash Claims Nurse Killed Newborn

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Nineteen-year-old Alexee Trevizo allegedly gave birth in a hospital bathroom and dumped her newborn in the trash in January. Trevizo’s attorney is now blaming Artesia General Hospital staff, claiming a nurse killed the baby by administering a cocktail of drugs, including morphine. The New Mexico teen also filed a notice of intent to sue the hospital for the wrongful death of the newborn. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy breaks down the latest development in the case with Jerry Dugan, a former medical malpractice attorney and homicide prosecutor.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Check out The Trail Went Cold podcast! TCG is a weekly true crime podcast which explores baffling unsolved mysteries and cold cases. Listen here!LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. 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 nothing was crying. It came out with that thing. I know, I know. But the baby's going to have to take it for autopsy and they'll be an divested for everything.

Months after Alexei Trevisio is charged with murdering her newborn baby, her lawyer says nurses who treated her at the hospital are actually responsible for the baby's death. Welcome to Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. The story of Alexei Trevisio is incredibly disturbing. The 19-year-old high school senior gave birth to her son in January in the bathroom of a hospital emergency room. Police say she suffocated the newborn and then hid his body in a trash can underneath a trash

bag. Now her lawyer says the nurses and doctors treating her at the hospital actually caused a still birth by giving her drugs such as morphine after she complained of back pain. but denied that she could be pregnant. Her lawyer, Gary Mitchell, told the Daily Mail.com that he has filed a notice of intent to sue the hospital, claiming Trevisio was given a number of drugs that caused the baby to stop breathing. This is what Gary Mitchell told law and crime in an interview recently. She had worked out that day on the cheer team for almost four hours or a little over four hours from 2.30 to 7 and then was dehydrated from that.

So trying to get a UA was a bit difficult, but when you do a blood test, which they took, it will also tell you whether or not you're pregnant. And it did. And that happened at 50 minutes after midnight. And she went to the hospital thinking that she was suffering from low back pain and severe abdominal pain and went there and indicated on a pain scale of 1 to 10, that she was at a 10, but not a single one of them told her that she was pregnant. Not a single one of them told her that we need to examine you. This is a classic instance that female feels the need to go to the restroom. Maybe we better check and make sure she's not delivering a baby.

I mean, you just don't allow that kind of thing if you know what you're doing. They did, and they didn't bother to tell her. And the child, we know, had morphine in the system. It only got that morphine because the hospital gave it to them. And the hospital didn't stop the medication after they had learned that she was pregnant. They didn't take the IV out then. They waited 48 minutes and continued to give her not only morphine, but sodium chloride, that's salt. That's not unusual and that should be.

Cadillac, Zulfron, and morphine. So this is a situation in which the hospital failed her, the nurses and doctors failed her, the office of the medical investigator has failed her. I've reached out to Gary Mitchell for a comment. At the time of this recording, he has not yet responded. Surveillance video showed Trevisio going to the bathroom in a hallway in a hurry while placing her hand at her rear end. Take a look at what a supervising nurse told police about what they found when they unlocked the bathroom. door. We did a pregnancy test on her. She showed positive. She had sex. Then she said she had to go

the bathroom. She went to the bathroom. She was in her for quite a while. We kept knocking on the door. Finally we got her to open the door and there was blood and shit everywhere. She was cleaning it up. So we took her back to the room. And I was afraid that she knew she was pregnant. She had done something to herself. So the doctor started doing a vaginal exam on her. We had the lady come to clean the bathroom, she put the baby in the trash can, and then she put another clean liner over the top of it. So when they looked in there, there was no trash in there, but it's underneath the clean bag. The baby's dead. Okay, we have them in Toronto too, but she killed the kitten. Moments later, police and the charge nurse spoke to Alexi and her mother.

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 nothing 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 the charged nurseer. Do you guys have any questions for me?

Like how big is the baby? It's full term. What? Nine months? Let me was crying. Let's see. Have you watched the news of the girls that, what they do to their babies and what they go to jail? Let them was crying.

Joining me to discuss this case is somebody who I think is the perfect guest to do it. He is Jerry Dugan. He was a longtime prosecutor in the homicide division of the Philadelphia DA's office and is currently a medical malpractice attorney. So, Jerry, welcome to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Sure, Ingenit, glad to help. I want your initial thoughts. Your initial thoughts on the body camera footage in this case, but also the claims by Alexei Trevisio, you see it in the body camera footage.

It wasn't breathing or there was no breathing, that type of thing. Well, I think overall, Ingenet, the defense in this case and the approach that the defendant seems to be taking through or lawyers seems to be both desperate and dangerous. I think it's desperation is based on the fact that there's really very little direction that they could take this. This is an adult, the woman, as I recall, is 19 years old. Yes. Made the conscious decision to dispose of a fetus and a trash can and then cover it over in the bathroom of an emergency room. So you begin with the premise that it is difficult, if not impossible, to exonerate this woman. And apparently the direction the defense is taking is a very dangerous one, because they've apparently chosen to attack everyone else

involved in the investigation and try to exclude this woman from any culpability, specifically the suggestion that the emergency room physicians are incompetent because they administered excessive amounts of morphine under circumstances which were not a deviation from the standard of care and then coupled with that argue that the forensic pathologist who can talk to the autopsy that his testing was what the newspaper describes in his own words as medieval that to me is a very dangerous approach to the defense in this case because attacking everyone else and attempting to exonerate a woman whose conduct borders and exceeds outrageous in my opinion is an act of desperation beyond many that I've ever seen before.

Obviously, they're claiming that this was a stillbirth. You know, they've taken this route. They're filing, filed a notice of intent to sue. So they're going a civil route. They're taking this to civil court. But obviously, it looks like this is possibly testing the waters for a defense in the criminal case. Like you lay this groundwork or, you know, you've got this other track you're going on and trying to put all of this out there. They say on the body camera footage, the nurse, the charge nurse clearly says she's been lying to us the whole time.

She said she didn't have sex. She denied that she could be pregnant. Pregnancy test comes back. She's pregnant. She locks herself in the bathroom. Won't let us in. We get the key. It's a bloody mess.

Blah, blah, blah. It's unbelievable to me that they're trying to say, oh, it was the drugs that killed the baby. And the baby was still born. She claims it wasn't crying or he wasn't crying. yet they find the baby in a trash bag with a knot tied around it in the first incident at the autopsy that i understand was conducted found air in the infant's lungs yes and assuming that's a correct finding either something or someone had to prevent that oxygen from being expelled and the most logical way to prevent the expulsion of oxygen in an infant or in anyone

is manual strangulation of closing off the airway. So the suggestion this is a stillborn and yet has oxygen in its lungs. And the claim that 0.19 nanograms of morphine was the causative agent. Keep in mind that a nanogram is one billionth of a gram. This was 1900s of one billionth of a gram of morphine in this infant system. is absolutely not a deviation from the standard of care in the emergency room to administer morphine to someone who is known to be pregnant. Morphing issues all the time for women who are pregnant in the emergency room setting where it's monitored for things like extraordinarily

back pain. So the fact that there was a fraction of a billionth of a gram of morphine found in this child's system did not kill this child. And I don't think the defense can possibly find a board-certified forensic pathologist who can say this baby was killed by the hospital. The argument here is you should accept the, what I call the Big Mac defense, that this child was not pregnant or didn't know she was pregnant. She was gaining weight as a cheerleader because she ate Big Macs every day. And what I think the defense is for getting here, and I don't mean to malign anyone, but I've done this for more than a couple years of my life. the jury in this case when they could very well be using if the defense was presented in my opinion

properly to use the overwhelming sympathy for this mother who arguably panicked as opposed to suggesting that everyone else is guilty except her borders on the desperate and dangerous and i think jury's nullification here could very well result in the jury when they see this photograph of the cheerleading defendant, who clearly has, for lack of a better term, a baby bump, and then to suggest, well, that's innocent enough because my boyfriend and I go to McDonald's every day, I can't conceive of a jury in this country saying, oh, that's a reasonable defense. The hospital killed this baby. I just think that defense is going nowhere. Hello, everyone. This is Robin Warder, host of the True Crime podcast, The Trail Went Cold.

If you grew up watching the classic television show Unsolved Mysteries, then this is the podcast for you. Each week, I profile a new Unsolved Murder or Missing Person's Case and share all the baffling details. Afterward, I provide my own personal analysis and theories about what might have happened. This is a show for true crime buffs who are fascinated by cold cases and love to discuss them and pick them apart in an attempt to figure out the truth. So be sure to check out our podcast. to learn about some truly bizarre, unsolved mysteries where the trail went cold. It clearly, to me, does not look. And I look at the photo of her in the cheerleading uniform.

Right. I mean, her legs look thinner. And then, I mean, it clearly looks like that is not from eating Big Macs, unless you're one of those people who just gains all their weight in the middle. But she's a slender, 19-year-old woman. you know, she could probably go out and eat Big Macs, you know, three times a day and not gain an ounce. I mean, you know what I mean? It's like when you're younger and you've got this high metabolism and you're active. Let me ask you, I know you're not an OBGYN. Okay. I know you're not

a gyneecologist. I spent some time doing emergency room medicine, however. Yes. And OBJN med malp work. Okay. So, but I'm, you know, I was kind of going to get maybe into the weeds a little bit on that portion of it um you know the baby does have air in its lungs so absolutely when a baby is still born what what would you find in the lungs would you just find like i don't know um fluid you know because they have to clean the baby's mouths out um once they're born usually clean out their noses and all of that stuff with all that stuff so what would you typically find in the lungs of a still born baby? I think what you wouldn't find is oxygen. And in a stillborn baby, my understanding from an OB perspective is the liquid that you would find in a stillborn baby would be

just the opposite of what the forensic pathologist claims in his autopsy found in the lungs of this baby. It certainly assumes that the forensic pathologist did two things. He eliminated all other causes of death, including this minute amount of morphine, then found the presence of oxygen in an alleged stillborn baby. And by process of elimination concluded that something caused this option and not to be expelled. And in fact, the only thing that was left was manual strangulation. And I don't think there's any way around that argument. They make it sound like, though, that the baby was put, you know, according to the autopsy finding, that the baby was put in an airtight environment such as the plastic bag.

So the baby was kind of breathing, but then the baby runs out of oxygen and therefore the baby suffocates. But you think it's possible she actually maybe strangled, choked the baby, or possibly smothered the baby and then put the baby in the plastic bag because I'm thinking to myself this baby once born likely would have made some noises in that bathroom and the nurse according to the timeline is going and knocking on the door and saying hey right are you okay are you going to come out that type of thing the one and I think you're 100% correct but the one thing that may be lost we are dealing with the forest for the trees here what seems or what conceivably would be lost by

The defense counsel but will not be lost by a jury is that the conduct of this woman does not reflect evidence of innocence. It reflects evidence of consciousness of guilt. Her behavior after the birth of this child is counterintuitive if she had no knowledge of pregnancy and that she had nothing to do with the child's death. The first thing I believe an innocent mother under these circumstances would have done would have been a scream, yell, seek help, find someone that could possibly do something to help this child when in fact the evidence of concealment and the evidence of guilt are directly

connected one to the other. I just think that the defense here is losing track of what a jury is going to be influenced by. And I think one of the things they'll be influenced by is taking a look at the cheerleading photograph. a look at the post-birth behavior and then, in my opinion, be offended by the arguments that everyone else is at fault except the mother. I don't think enough attention is being paid by the defense to what a jury's reasonable reaction to this case would be. And I think it's going to be

something that will reflect outrage on the part of a jury that this is an argument that is turning away from a mother whose conduct is difficult to describe or accept and make everyone else culpable. I don't think any jury, in my opinion, is going to buy that argument. So if you're representing the hospital and you receive this notice of intent, you know, to file a lawsuit, a civil suit, you're representing the hospital and, you know, and therefore the doctors and nurses who were involved in her care, what do you do when you receive this? What's the next step? Well, the next step is exactly what I would have done here if on the defense side of the hospital. The first thing of what I've done, obviously, is make sure

that all of the charting of the admission of this woman was done accurately and that it is reflective of what actually happened. But more importantly, as a defense lawyer for the hospital, I would have retained not only a forensic pathologist, but a forensic toxicologist and also an emergency room expert. Number one, that the emergency room expert board certified would hopefully testify that it is not a deviation from the standard of care to administer morphine to a pregnant woman. And in fact, it is not a deviation from the standard of care. The second thing I would do is to have a forensic pathologist, review the autopsy findings, and hopefully agree that the forensic pathologist for the state who did the autopsy, did it properly. And finally, I'd have

a forensic toxicologist to testify that 0.19 nanograms of morphine, under no circumstances, contributed to the death of this child. That would be the defense the hospital would present. If they give, you know, Alexi, these, not only the morphine, but the other drugs mentioned by the, or her defense attorney. Right. You know, so you're saying it's just such a minuscule amount, even if she's saying, no, I'm not pregnant. I've never had sexual in a course. there's no way I'm pregnant. I'm getting periods and all of this stuff. You're saying that the amount of morphine, because he's directly attributing it to the morphine, even if you didn't know she was pregnant, it was so minuscule that no way this ever causes a baby to stop breathing.

Absolutely not. That morphine is administered to pregnant women in emergency rooms all the time. It is not a deviation to do it. It's done regularly because of severe pain. When there is knowledge that a woman is pregnant, morphine is still administered under certain circumstances. And the incredibly minute amount of morphine that's found here, I don't think any board-certified forensic toxicologist is ever going to testify under oath that this amount of morphine contributed or caused the death of this child. I just kind of conceive there is a board-certified expert out there that could honestly say that because it's not correct. attorney is also saying that the baby was positive for COVID and influenza A and B. Obviously, we know that influenza can be fatal in babies who've not, you know, if they have asthma and other, other, you know, comorbidities. Those are other conditions that could, you know, babies and kids

die of the flu every year. So you're, but you're saying like, even with under those circumstances, because those are respiratory illnesses, no way. What I'm saying is that if in fact, and I have to assume that the state of New Mexico, where this case I understand is pending, as a board certified, fully qualified forensic pathologist who does autopsies for a living, looked at the toxicology, looked at the autopsy, and concluded, with nothing to gain or lose, by the way, that these did not contribute to this infant's death. There's no motivation on the part of the forensic pathologist who works for the state of New Mexico to say anything other than what the conclusions, in his opinion, are correct. On the other hand,

I assume that the defense will try to identify a similarly qualified forensic toxicologist or pathologist to say the opposite. And it comes down to a battle of experts. But, Angenet, at the end of the day, what I think is being law, here is what a jury is likely to be influenced by. A woman who has categorically repeatedly lied, then her conduct in the bathroom is certainly consciousness of, in my opinion, of guilt rather than innocence. And the argument about a Big Mac defense, again, this is being lost in the weeds by back and forth minutia between experts. I don't think a jury will pay one bit of attention to that and may very very will be turned off very early in this case by looking at that photograph, listening

to what the nurses say reflective of how many times this woman lied, and then being outraged by the Big Mac defense. I think you can have all the experts in the world you want, but remember, a jury is going to decide this case, not a forensic expert, and that's what I think is being lost here. Well, Jerry Dugan, thank you so much for coming on to talk with us about this. We hope you'll come back. We really enjoyed your comment. and your analysis.

I enjoyed it, Ingenet. Thanks so much. That's it for this edition of Law and Crime's Sidebar podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. Just remember to hit the subscribe button. I'm Anjanet Levy, and we'll see you next time.

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