Patel had successfully appealed a 20-year-sentence for feticide.
The decks have been cleared for Purvi Patel, the Indian American woman from Indiana whose 20-year-sentence for feticide was overturned recently, to be released from prison.
Patel may be released as early as tomorrow after she was re-sentenced to 18 months in prison, which legally she has already served before the charges were overturned, reported the Associated Press.
A news release Wednesday by the St. Joseph County prosecutor’s office said it has notified the Indiana Department of Correction that Patel has already served 525 days in prison. It said with credit for good behavior, she had served a total of 1,050 days, which means she has served her prison term. A Department of Correction spokesman said he did not know when she will be released.
The statement said no hearing was held for the resentencing on the neglect of a dependent charge because neither side had new issues.
Patel had successfully appealed her 2015 feticide and child neglect convictions that resulted in a 20-year prison sentence. In its ruling, the appeals court vacated both of those convictions. But it found that Patel, 35, should be resentenced on a lower-level child neglect charge that carries a maximum three-year sentence.
Patel was 32 when she was arrested in July 2013 after seeking treatment at a hospital for profuse bleeding after delivering a 1?-pound infant boy and putting his body in a trash bin behind her family’s restaurant, reported AP.
Court records show Patel purchased abortion-inducing drugs online through a Hong Kong pharmacy, took those drugs and delivered a premature baby that died in the bathroom of the home she shared with her parents and grandparents in Granger, northeast of South Bend.
Her attorneys argued that evidence did not support Patel’s convictions and that the laws prosecutors used didn’t apply to her alleged actions in the premature delivery.
Attorneys for Indiana said she was at least 25 weeks into her pregnancy, just beyond the threshold of viability, and the infant took at least one breath before dying. The state also argued that Indiana’s feticide law could apply to a pregnant woman, not just “to third-party actors.”
But the appeals court disagreed, saying that since being enacted in 1979 the law had only been used to prosecute those who attacked pregnant women.
The judges also wrote that the wording of state law on illegal abortions shows the Legislature “intended for any criminal liability to be imposed on medical personnel, not women who perform their own abortions.”
The court said Patel endangered the child by not seeking medical care, but that prosecutors failed to prove this action resulted in the boy’s death.