Home-birth deaths case ends with prison sentences

Prison sentences in the case over the deaths of a mother and child during a home birth in Jelgava have taken effect after Latvia’s Supreme Court refused to initiate cassation proceedings, LSM reported, citing the LETA news agency.

The Zemgale Regional Court had upheld the first-instance ruling, which sentenced the defendants to two years and 10 months and two years and seven months in prison. Because the case was heard in closed court, the court did not disclose which defendant received each sentence.

Several members of the First Evangelical Church of Jesus congregation were charged in the case, including the dead woman’s husband and father and the wife of the congregation’s spiritual leader. Prosecutors said they provided medical assistance without authorisation, although they lacked the necessary medical education and equipment.

The defendants had agreed to organise, conduct and assist with the birth despite lacking the qualifications and equipment needed to provide medical care and patient support if necessary.

The defendants’ lawyers appealed the first-instance ruling, but the Zemgale Regional Court left it unchanged.

According to information previously reported by Latvijas Avīze, the 21-year-old woman went into labour on May 14, 2019. Her husband Renārs, then 25, her 51-year-old father Valdis Simsons and 40-year-old Solvita Dāvida, the wife of the religious congregation’s spiritual leader, decided to handle the birth themselves despite having no medical education.

The baby was born asphyxiated, while the mother later died from eclampsia, the most severe form of pregnancy-related toxicosis, according to the prosecution’s case.