Mother Gets 25 Years to Life for Killing Newborn

SANTA ANA —  A 23-year-old Santa Ana woman who was convicted of killing her newborn son was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Friday.

Teresa Sanchez’s child was found asphyxiated in a trash bin behind her apartment in April, 1996.

The jury that convicted Sanchez did not believe her attorney’s argument that she suffered from a pregnancy-related mental disorder that led her to kill the infant and to continue to maintain that the baby wasn’t hers.

“She honestly does not believe that baby was hers,” said Deputy Public Defender Bob Knox.

In Orange County Superior Court on Friday, Judge John J. Ryan indicated he didn’t believe the defense either.

“She knew she was pregnant and she continually denied it,” Ryan said. “That implies it was premeditated and deliberate.”

Sanchez, who sat quietly through most of her trial, sobbed through Friday’s proceedings, as did her mother. Following the sentencing, Sanchez’s relatives reiterated their belief that she was neither the mother nor the killer of the child.

Sanchez was arrested in April at the Santa Ana apartment she shared with her mother, two brothers, a sister-in-law and several children, including her young son, Mario.

Following her arrest, Sanchez submitted to a medical examination that proved she had recently given birth to a fully developed child.

The boy police found in a plastic bag in a dumpster had been born on March 15. An autopsy showed that the child had died about one hour after birth.