A Florida appeals court has denied a petition to have a Miami-Dade inmate's unborn baby released from jail.
In an 11-page order, Florida's 3rd District Court of Appeals on Friday dismissed an emergency petition that was filed last week on behalf of the unborn child of 24-year-old Natalia Harrell, who was arrested this past July on a second-degree murder charge.
The appeals court's order didn't dismiss the petition on the merits, but essentially said there are still questions to be decided in a lower court.
"Because the petition is filed without a record to establish a factual basis and because consideration of this petition will be factually intensive, we follow Supreme Court precedent and exercise our discretion to dismiss the petition without prejudice to a remedy being pursued in a circuit court," reads the order from Judge Thomas Logue, with Judge Fleur Lobree concurring.
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Judge Monica Gordo, who concurred in part and dissented in part, wrote that the unborn child was entitled to representation but said Florida law "recognizes that a mother’s lawful incarceration may result in an unborn child—in utero—being in a correctional facility."
Gordo called claims that the child was being unlawfully detained in jail "illogical."
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"No more could the government be accused of unlawfully detaining the unborn child in this case than could the mother be guilty of kidnapping over interstate lines if she chose to visit her grandmother in Georgia while eight months pregnant. The argument is illogical," Gordo wrote. "The mother comes to us as a badly disguised Trojan Horse. In fact, the argument is nothing more than an attempt for the mother to leverage her unborn child as a basis to be released from lawful detention."
"An unborn child is a person," attorney William Norris, who represents the unborn child, said earlier this week. "A person has constitutional rights and one of them is the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law."
Norris' petition claimed the unborn child, which has spent about eight months in the womb, has received inadequate prenatal care while Harrell has been held without bond.
Attorneys for the unborn baby claim the Miami-Dade Corrections Department didn't bring Harrell to a scheduled prenatal medical appointment at a local hospital, and claim her last visit with an OB-GYN was in October 2022.
According to Friday's order, the corrections department said Harrell has refused some prenatal care.
"Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation partners with Jackson Health System to provide healthcare to the inmates in our custody, and we are committed to ensuring all inmates receive professional, timely medical care and all appropriate treatment," Miami-Dade Corrections officials said in a statement Monday. "We are conducting a full review of the health services offered and received to ensure that all pre-natal care being provided in our custody is appropriate."
Harrell was arrested after police said she shot and killed another woman as they rode in an Uber in Miami last July.
Police said Harrell and the other woman, 28-year-old Gladys Yvette Borcela, got into an argument and Harrell shot Borcela.
According to a motion to set bond filed by Harrell last month, Harrell said she was assaulted by Borcela and was in fear for her life and the life of her unborn child when she fired the fatal shot.
The motion said Harrell will seek to have the case dismissed under Florida's so-called "Stand Your Ground" law.
