Mother Agrees to Sterilization
AP, February 10, 2005
A Georgia judge has taken the unusual step of ordering a mother of seven who pleaded guilty to killing her 5-week-old daughter to have a medical procedure that would prevent her from having more children.
Carisa Ashe was charged with murder and faced life in prison if convicted. After two days of trial, Ashe, 34, admitted to voluntary manslaughter.
As a condition of her sentence, she has 90 days to get a tubal ligation or prosecutors can reinstate the murder charge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes said in an order issued Tuesday.
According to prosecutors, Destiny Ashe had been shaken and hit so badly her brain swelled and hemorrhaged. She died Dec. 16, 1998.
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Though extreme, such a sentence is not unheard of elsewhere in the country.
A similar sentence was imposed in November for an Arcadia, La., woman whose daughter’s decomposed body was discovered inside a trash bag. Brenda Shaffer pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and agreed to undergo the same procedure.
A Kentucky family court judge has also offered tubal ligation in exchange for jail time since 1993 to several women with multiple children who fell behind on child-support payments. For men, the same judge has ordered a choice between a vasectomy and jail time.
