Background
In 1992, the body of a newborn female infant was found wrapped in a sheet inside a plastic bag floating in the Catawba River in York County. Also in the bag were scissors and the umbilical cord and placenta. Medical examination indicated the infant had been born alive and died from being stabbed with the scissors, asphyxiation, or a combination of both. Investigators were unable to identify a suspect, and the case went cold.
Advances in DNA testing and forensic analysis reopened the investigation in 2016. Testing established that Stacy Michelle Rabon was the infant’s mother. When police interviewed Rabon, she admitted giving birth to the infant but told a story that did not result in charges against her: she said she had located a couple named Steve and Natalie (last names unknown) through a coworker named Jasmine, that Steve came to pick her up in a work van when she went into labor, that she gave birth in the van, and that one of the men cut the umbilical cord before the couple took the baby. She said she never saw the child again. Police could not corroborate this account or locate Jasmine, Steve, or Natalie through any investigative channels.
Additional evidence undercut Rabon’s story: she inquired about the specific manner in which the infant had died (by a weapon rather than drowning), suggesting knowledge the police had not publicly released; the infant’s blood contained cocaine despite Rabon’s denial of drug use during the pregnancy; and the placenta and umbilical cord were still attached to the infant despite Rabon’s claim that the cord had been cut before the couple took the baby. At trial, the jury acquitted Rabon of murder but convicted her of homicide by child abuse (HBCA) under the version of § 16-3-85(A)(1) in effect in 1992. The trial court imposed a life sentence. Rabon appealed, challenging a single jury instruction.
The Court’s Holding
Affirmed. A unanimous panel held that the challenged instruction did not constitute an impermissible judicial comment on witness credibility, and that even if it did, any error was harmless given the weight of the evidence.
The instruction at issue told jurors that “a simple mistake by a witness doesn’t mean the witness wasn’t telling the truth as he or she remembers it,” and the trial court clarified: “So if a witness misstates something, you must decide whether it was because of an innocent lapse in memory or an intentional deception.” Rabon argued this instruction improperly suggested that witness mistakes should be excused rather than weighed against credibility, and that it had the effect of bolstering the State’s witnesses and undermining the credibility challenge to Rabon’s videotaped statements to police.
The court disagreed. Evaluating the jury charge as a whole—not the complained-of sentence in isolation—the totality of the instructions made clear that credibility determinations rested entirely with the jury. The challenged instruction did not favor any particular witness, did not identify any specific statement as a mistake, and did not direct the jury to draw any conclusion from a mistake. It was a neutral instruction applicable to all witnesses on both sides. On harmless error, the court found no basis for reversal in any event: Rabon’s own admissions—that she gave birth at night in a stranger’s van and entrusted the newborn to people she did not know, whose only identifiable characteristic was that one had a felony conviction—were sufficient for the jury to find “extreme indifference to human life” under the HBCA statute, even setting aside whether Rabon personally inflicted the fatal injuries. The case involved no live witness testimony competing with Rabon’s credibility, further reducing the risk that the instruction tilted the verdict.
Key Takeaways
- A jury instruction that a witness’s honest mistake does not equal untruthfulness does not constitute an impermissible judicial comment on credibility when it applies equally to all witnesses and the charge as a whole leaves credibility assessments to the jury.
- Jury charges must be evaluated as a whole; isolated instructions that might seem misleading in isolation do not constitute reversible error if the overall charge fairly covers the law.
- Under § 16-3-85(A)(1), homicide by child abuse does not require proof of intent to harm; “extreme indifference to human life” can be established by proof that the defendant performed a deliberate act knowing it would create a risk of death, even if the defendant did not personally inflict the fatal injuries.
- A defendant’s admissions that she knowingly placed a newborn in the custody of unidentified strangers in a clandestine delivery setting, without arranging medical care or verifying the recipients’ fitness, can support an HBCA conviction on an extreme-indifference theory.
Why It Matters
For South Carolina criminal practitioners, Rabon reinforces two important points about HBCA prosecutions. First, the extreme-indifference theory under § 16-3-85(A)(1) is broader than it might appear: a parent can be convicted of HBCA based on the circumstances of a child’s abandonment even when the jury is not convinced the parent personally inflicted the fatal harm. The jury’s acquittal on the murder charge but conviction on HBCA here illustrates exactly how that split verdict can operate. Second, the jury-instruction issue is a reminder that trial judges must caution jurors not only on how to weigh testimony favorably to the State, but also that the “charge as a whole” standard gives considerable latitude. A neutral instruction about the relationship between witness mistakes and truthfulness is unlikely to survive as reversible error on appeal.
The case also demonstrates the power of forensic science in cold cases. Three pieces of objective evidence—the cocaine in the infant’s system, the attached umbilical cord and placenta, and Rabon’s apparent knowledge of nonpublic details about the manner of death—directly contradicted Rabon’s account and allowed the jury to find the needed elements even without a direct eyewitness to the killing.