Emile Weaver, 27, now has a chance to someday get out of prison after the results of her resentencing last Thursday for murdering her newborn daughter, Addison Grace Weaver.
Formerly set to serve life without parole, she is now eligible for parole once she spends 20 years behind bars.
The Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office in Ohio met the news bitterly, highlighting prosecutor statements that the defendant lacked remorse and acted intentionally.
“We live in a community where people are held accountable for their actions, whether good or bad,” they wrote. “Our office has spent more than eight years fighting for justice for Addison. While we accept the court’s decision, we believe the reduction of the defendant’s sentence has robbed Addison of the justice she deserved.”
Emile Weaver fatally abandoned her newborn daughter, Addison Grace Weaver, prosecutors said. (Mug shot: Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office)
Weaver, a sorority sister at Muskingum University in New Concord, claimed to give birth in a toilet in a sorority house. Two other sorority sisters found the baby dead on April 22, 2015.
“The defendant decided to stuff Addison in a trash pail, put her in a plastic garbage bag, tie the bag in a knot and leave it outside,” county prosecutor Ron Welch said.
Jurors convicted Weaver in May 2016 of aggravated murder, gross abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.
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Her defense ultimately convinced the courts that the trial judge should’ve allowed mitigating expert testimony regarding Weaver’s mental state during the stressful experience of pregnancy.
The defense presented a report from Stanford University Dr. Clara Lewis, who did an interview with Weaver and submitted an affidavit:
In her report, Dr. Lewis explained that many people find it “impossible” to understand how and why a woman could commit neonaticide; but research reveals and psychiatrists explain that neonaticide is “patterned” and that women who commit neonaticide fit a particular profile. For instance, Dr. Lewis noted that women who commit neonaticide “tend to be immature, isolated, worried about the judgment of others on issues ranging from sex to abortion to unwed motherhood” and they generally “receive no prenatal care, suffer from pregnancy denial, make no plans for their labor or delivery, and labor alone on toilets without medical care.” And when the baby arrives, “their denial shatters and panic ensues,” leading these women to respond with “poorly concealed acts of desperation.” Dr. Lewis emphasized that panic is “central” to cases involving neonaticide, which suggests that this crime is “not carefully planned.”
Dr. Lewis concluded that Weaver fit the typical personality and demographic profile and her actions followed the typical pattern, noting that Weaver’s social isolation, her immaturity, and her boyfriend’s insistence on secrecy during the pregnancy, as well as her sorority sisters’ actions, all reinforced her isolating behavior and denial of the pregnancy. Accordingly, while Dr. Lewis acknowledged that Weaver deserved to be punished for her conduct, she emphasized that presenting this existing body of research on neonaticide at Weaver’s sentencing “would have demonstrated that there are substantial grounds to mitigate her individual culpability.”
Prosecutors said Weaver did not want the child and did not want to be judged for getting pregnant.
The day before the birth — and murder — Weaver demanded the suspected father tell his parents she was pregnant or else, prosecutors said. The man was not the father.
“No more baby,” she texted the man after the murder.
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