Court urged to deny probation to couple who killed infant
Prosecutors in South China’s Guangdong Province have proposed not to grant probation to a couple who left their newborn baby to freeze to death, amid rising public concerns over frequent cases of parents causing the death of their children.
The couple were charged with intentional homicide at the trial on Thursday, with their attorney suggesting the court give a probation as the couple did not kill the baby intentionally, according to jcrb. com, a website under the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
However, the prosecutors said that allowing probation for the couple would literally send the message to the public that mothers would be exempted from going to jail for killing their children, jcrb. com reported.
The 19- year- old female defendant surnamed Ma gave birth to a baby boy at a rented house in Tung Chung township in Guangzhou on December 4, 2016, and soon after left him naked on the cold floor while cleaning the space. Ma and her boyfriend then abandoned the baby near a dust bin outside their house.
Police later found the boy, already dead, at a garbage station. The boy only lived for two hours. Autopsy showed that the boy caught cold after soaking in amniotic fluid, and most of his skin peeled off his body, said the jcrb. com.
The jcrb. com report did not mention the period of the jail term for the couple.
But according to China’s Criminal Law, those accused of intentional homicide receive a sentence of three to 10 years in prison, and life sentence or death in severe circumstances.
Persecutors said that the rampant problem of mothers killing infants has drawn widespread attention in recent years, and parental abuse of children is also common, due to the traditional view that children are the “private property” of parents, reported the jcrb. com.
A mother who killed her newborn baby by stabbing him with scissors and throwing him to the ground was sentenced to four years in prison for intentional homicide at Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in January, Beijing Morning Post reported.
“Due to weak child protection awareness in the Chinese society, defendants in similar cases have been handed light sentences,” Wan Daqiang, a Beijing- based lawyer specializing in child protection, told the Global Times.