Grand jury declines to indict Ohio woman who miscarried of abusing a corpse

An Ohio grand jury has declined to indict Brittany Watts, the 34-year-old woman charged with abusing a corpse after experiencing a miscarriage at home in a case that drew national attention to the ways women may be criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes in a post-Dobbs landscape.

The Trumbull County grand jury that had been investigating Watts’s case for a month on Thursday returned what’s known as a “no bill” for felony abuse of a corpse charges. The charges against Watts were immediately dismissed.

Trumbull County prosecutor Dennis Watkins said that while his office pursued the case, he ultimately agrees that Watts did not violate Ohio’s criminal statute concerning the abuse of a corpse.

Watkins was widely criticized for pursuing the charges against Watts and was last month urged by medical and legal professionals to drop the case. But in his statement on Thursday, Watkins emphasized that he and his staff were allowing the criminal justice system to “make a decision through fairness and due process of law.”

The case, which started at the municipal level before being passed to Trumbull County, was pursued not because of the miscarriage, but what happened afterward when the contents were left in a toilet, according to Lewis Guarnieri, an assistant prosecutor for the city of Warren.

Traci Timko, Watts’s lawyer, in an email to The Washington Post reiterated her argument that her client’s charges were not supported by Ohio law.

“No matter how shocking or disturbing it may sound when presented in a public forum, it is simply the devastating reality of miscarriage,” Timko said of the circumstances surrounding Watts’s arrest. “While the last three months have been agonizing, we are incredibly grateful and relieved.”

Timko said Watts’s case also led “countless” women to share their own stories of pregnancy loss.

“It is our hope and intention to make sure that Brittany’s story is an impetus to change,” Timko wrote. “Through education and legislation, we can make sure no other woman must set her grief and trauma on a back burner to muster the strength to fight for her freedom.”

Between 2006 and the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights, there have been 1,400 cases involving pregnancy-related criminalization, a stark uptick from years prior, according to Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice. Poor women and women of color are most impacted.

“In this post-Dobbs environment, we expect to see more of this: Where women, pregnant people, people who experience pregnancy loss, are policed and punished,” she said. The Supreme Court decision to rollback a constitutional right to an abortion came in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Rivera said she’s hopeful that Thursday’s outcome may deter officials from prosecuting similar cases.

Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, one of the chief professional groups condemning the charges against Watts, in a statement hailed the grand jury’s decision as a “firm step against the dangerous trend of criminalizing reproductive outcomes.”

Lauren Beene, a doctor who co-founded the group, told The Post Thursday that charging pregnant people in the midst of life-threatening complications and devastating losses could lead to a dangerous outcomes if women are afraid of seeking necessary health care.

The Post previously reconstructed Watts’s days leading up to her miscarriage, drawing on medical records, call recordings and interviews with Watts and her lawyer.

Watts miscarried at home in September after spending several days in the hospital, where she had been told her nearly 22-week pregnancy was not viable. There was still a detectable fetal heartbeat, which complicated how quickly a decision could be made to induce Watts, despite doctors indicating she was at increasing risk of death. Abortion in Ohio remains legal up to 22 weeks.

At home, Watts delivered a roughly 15-ounce fetus over the toilet, records show. When she returned to the hospital after her delivery, a nurse who inquired about the fetus later reported Watts to police. Court records state that the nurse had reported that the fetus had been placed in a bucket in Watts’s backyard.

Timko, Watts’s attorney, said her client had no criminal record and was being “demonized for something that goes on every day,” but a municipal judge found there was evidence to bind Watts’s case over for a grand jury investigation.

A coroner’s report later confirmed the fetus died in utero. Neither prosecutors nor health-care workers who treated Watts disputed that her pregnancy loss was natural.

On Thursday before the grand jury announcement, a rally in support of Watts had been scheduled in the Warren Courthouse Square. A fundraiser for Watts that began in December has raised more than $230,000.