By Hassan Gbassay Koroma
Fatmata Kamara, a woman in her 30s, who pleaded guilty to the offense of manslaughter, has been sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for giving birth and throwing her new born baby into a toilet pit to die.
The convict, who is also a mother of three kids, has been in police custody since 2020 and was been tried by Justice Adrian Fisher for the offence of murder, until the State represented by Lawyer Solomon Christian Kekura, applied for an amendment for the charge to be reduced from murder to manslaughter, for which the convict pleaded guilty.
Fact of the case in court shows that the convict, in 2019, got pregnant for a married man and during that period, she did all she could to get rid of the pregnancy until the night she finally gave birth to the baby and decided to dump the baby into a toilet pit.
The fact further states that, the baby was later discovered in the toilet alive and was taken to the hospital where he eventually dies after 21-day.
It was alleged that, even though the convict was around, she never admitted that the baby was hers until she was caught by the police.
The convict’s statement to the police state that, she never wanted to keep the pregnancy being that the man responsible for her pregnancy was a married man.
In her plea of mitigation, the convict told the court that, what she did was done out of stress, noting that because the father of her three children was not taking care of them and that she didn’t want to add more burden on her, that was why she did what she did.
In his verdict, Justice Fisher says, the act of the convict was premeditated and that there was all evidence that she wanted to get rid of the pregnancy, but because she didn’t that was why she dumped the baby into the pit toilet after giving birth.
He said according to the convict, the baby slipped from her and fell into the pit while attending to nature, but evidence showed that the convict actually gave birth to the baby and later pushed him into the pit and left him there to die.
He concluded that, the crime the convict committed has a maximum sentencing of life imprisonment, but considering her plea mitigation and for the fact that she had three more kids, he was minded to reduce the sentencing.
