Woman sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder of her newborn daughter in El Salvador

(CNN Spanish) --

A sentencing court in San Miguel, in eastern El Salvador, imposed 50 years in prison on Lesly Lisbeth Ramírez Ramírez for the crime of aggravated homicide of her newborn daughter.

The woman, now 21 years old, received the maximum sentence contemplated in the Penal Code of El Salvador.

According to the accusation of the Prosecutor's Office, on June 17, 2020, Ramírez had an out-of-hospital delivery in which she gave birth to a girl, to whom she would later have caused six neck wounds with a knife, and then allegedly left her lying in the house yard.

The Prosecutor's Office presented to the court the forensic opinion that determined that the girl was born alive and that the cause of her death was "cutting her throat due to a contusive-cutting wound caused by a knife."

During the judicial process, the Prosecutor's Office assured that Ramírez hid the pregnancy from her relatives, who, after she gave birth, took her to a hospital, where she was detained by the authorities.

She at that time she was 19 years old.

The version of the authorities was rejected by the defense during the criminal process.

“There are no eyewitnesses.

That scenario proposed by the Prosecutor's Office did not occur," Aby Cortez, the young woman's lawyer, told CNN.

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According to Cortez, there is no evidence to support the facts described by the Prosecutor's Office in his indictment, and he denies that he attacked the baby with a knife.

The lawyer says that Ramírez did not know that she was pregnant and that she felt the desire to defecate without knowing that labor was beginning.

"She was a first-timer and she didn't know what she was going through at the time. She went to the latrine and passed something out, but she didn't know that she was her," Cortez added, in a telephone interview with CNN.

Homicide