Sabrina Butler

Sabrina Butler (born 1971) is a Mississippi woman who was eventually acquitted at a retrial after being convicted as a teenager for the alleged murder and child abuse of her nine-month-old son.

Background

Sabrina had previously lost custody of another child for abusing them. Neither the jury at her first trial or her retrial would be informed of this.[1]

Death of baby

On April 11, 1989, 18-year-old Sabrina Butler rushed her nine-month-old son, Walter Dean Butler, to the hospital after he suddenly stopped breathing. Doctors had attempted to resuscitate the child for thirty minutes, but failed, and Sabrina's baby died the same day. On April 12, 1989, the day after her son died, Sabrina was arrested and charged with capital murder. There were bruises left by her resuscitation attempts and the resuscitation attempted by the hospital.[1]

Sabrina drew suspicion after giving numerous conflicting statements to the police, including at least one version in which she admitted punching her son in the stomach when he was crying.[1]

Trial

Sabrina's murder trial commenced on March 8, 1990. At the trial, prosecutors sought to prove that Sabrina's account of the events leading to her son's death were false, and that she had inflicted the fatal wounds intentionally.[2] Sabrina did not testify at her trial. In 1990, she was convicted of capital murder and child abuse and sentenced to death. Sabrina became the only woman on Mississippi's death row.[3]

Appeal

Following her conviction, Sabrina filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Mississippi on several bases. The courts reversed and remanded her convictions on August 26, 1992.[3] The court said the prosecution had failed to prove that the incident was not an accident.[4]

Retrial

In 1995, Sabrina Butler's case went to retrial.[5] By this time, more evidence emerged that Sabrina may have not murdered her son. At the trial, one of Sabrina's neighbors had come forward with evidence that corroborated her account: that the injuries to her son occurred during the course of an unsuccessful attempt to administer CPR.[2] In addition, the medical examiner changed his opinion about Walter's cause of death, which he now believed occurred due to a kidney malady.[5] The jury foreperson indicated that they weren't fully convinced of Sabrina's innocence, but did have reasonable doubt.[1]

Sabrina's own attorney has stated that he "doesn't know what the truth is." Her co-counsel indicated that, at best, the case should have been prosecuted as manslaughter.[1]

On December 17, 1995, Sabrina was acquitted and released from custody.[4]

Today

When Sabrina was acquitted of murder, she had spent more than five years in prison and thirty-three months on death row. She is the first of two women in the United States to be exonerated from death row, the other being Debra Milke in Arizona.

Today, Sabrina is living in the same Mississippi town in which she was convicted, has remarried, and is raising three children. She is now hoping to be a criminal investigator.[6]

Sabrina Butler-Porter had a book published in 2012, entitled Exonerated: The Sabrina Butler Story. She is also a storyteller in a collection of stories entitled Pruno, Ramen and a Side of Hope, Stories of Surviving Wrongful Conviction. In 2022, Elle magazine published her opinion essay about efforts to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio and summarizing claims raised by advocates that Lucio's conviction may be unreliable.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "S. Rept. 107-315 - THE INNOCENCE PROTECTION ACT OF 2002". www.congress.gov. Retrieved 2026-02-13.
  2. ^ a b "Mississippi Victims of the State". Retrieved 2011-06-04.
  3. ^ a b "Supreme Court of Mississippi. Sabrina BUTLER v. STATE of Mississippi" (PDF). 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2010-06-04.
  4. ^ a b "Sabrina Butler". Center of Wrongful Conviction on Youth. 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-07-04. Retrieved 2011-06-04.
  5. ^ a b "Sabrina Butler". Wrongly Convicted Database Record. Archived from the original on 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2011-06-04.
  6. ^ Toby Sheerer (2009-04-29). "Female death row exoneree Sabrina Butler shares story with students". Retrieved 2011-06-04.
  7. ^ "I Was an Innocent Woman Sentenced to Die. Here's Why Melissa Lucio Must Be Saved". ELLE. 2022-03-31. Retrieved 2026-01-08.
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