The purpose of this paper is not to re-try Vanessa Rico, nor to come to any conclusions concerning her guilt or culpability in the drowning death of her daughter. The intent of this analysis is to locate the many pieces of a puzzle. After all, the prosecution of Vanessa Rico did not occur in an ideological void. Racism and stereotypical perceptions of Hispanics, traditional beliefs about women’s sexuality, motherhood, and domesticity, coupled with archaic notions of ‘class’ control have all assembled to create a climate of blame and facilitate in this prosecution. What at first glance appears to be a simple scene of crime, prosecution, and conviction upon closer inspection becomes distorted and disconcerting. The pieces that make up this puzzle are ugly, and their implications may threaten those who think themselves immune.

In a post-verdict interview, County Attorney Richard Romley explained how his office differentiated this case from dozens of others. After leaving her two children in the bathtub, says Romley, "(She) never told anyone the ten-month-old was in the tub. It rose to a criminal standard at that point" (Klawonn and Sowers). According to Rico, the two children (a two-year-old boy and Valeria) were placed in the bathtub with the water running. Leaving the drain unstopped, Rico left the apartment to meet a neighbor who had offered to give her a ride to work the following day. After giving the man her phone number, Rico was interrupted by another neighbor’s screaming. Inside the apartment, one of the two Mexican residents (with whom Rico had been visiting when she decided to bathe the children) had discovered Valeria unconscious. Rico admitted that no attempt at C.P.R. was made (Sowers).

In a rare legal maneuver, Judge Barry Schneider removed himself on July 3, 2001, as the case opened. After reviewing the facts, Judge Schneider explained that he saw the case as "only a tragedy and not a criminal act, . . ." adding that, if it were up to him, Rico would not be charged. Schneider went on to say that if the county attorney’s office insisted on prosecuting Rico for negligent homicide, all parents whose children have drowned should be prosecuted also, since some degree of negligence exists in every case (Klawonn).

Editorial commentator Robert Robb questioned the standard of "negligent homicide" as well. On July 15, during the trial, Robb’s opinion piece, "Romley is Raising the Bar for Parents, but How High?" ran in the Arizona Republic. In it, Robb questions County Attorney Romley’s power to ascribe criminality by asking a series of theoretical questions. "What if the injury to the baby had been less severe? Is it any less negligent to leave a baby alone in a tub if, by the grace of God, nothing happens?" Robb says the old standard "was understandable and defensible," that is, intentionally hurting a child is criminal. The new standard that Romley applies to the Rico case, however, is vague, highly subjective, and "its consequences are (not) at all clear." Yet Robb’s critical commentary during the Rico trial was the exception and not the rule.

Even before the trial began, columnist E.J. Montini sided with the county attorney’s office. Referring to the proliferation of child-drownings and the ineffectiveness of prevention campaigns, he says, "Nice hasn’t worked. Sympathetic hasn’t worked. Jail might work" (Montini). In the Ahwatukee Foothills News, one columnist bemoaned the absence of personal accountability and perceived Romley’s decision to prosecute as an enforcement of parental responsibility. "It seems when children’s lives are at stake, personal accountability is nowhere to be found these days" (Hopkins). Journalist and T.V. personality Jana Bommersbach addressed Vanessa Rico directly, saying, "Vanessa…there is a difference between an accident and a grossly negligent act" (Bommersbach). Coincidentally, just weeks before the trial began, the Phoenix Fire Department kicked off its drowning prevention campaign entitled, "Enough is Enough," in an attempt to "persuade" people to be more diligent with children and water (Craig). The rhetoric had been escalated and consensus achieved.

Vanessa Rico is not just any mother. She is a particular one. Although she has lived in this country since the age of eight, she is not a legal resident of the United States and is not fluent in English. She is poor, living in a part of central Phoenix that is considered low-income, and a single mother. Her children have separate fathers, and she is, of course, female (Sowers). Although some might argue that Rico’s prosecution was a result of her criminal actions alone, it is impossible to miss the fact that on each of these counts, Rico fails to meet the ideal. Ethnically, she belongs to one of most persecuted groups in the U.S., non-English-speaking Hispanics. Her class status is one of veritable powerlessness, and her gender, particularly in the context of sexual practices, is historically vulnerable. If this were a wealthy white Scottsdale housewife, would the words "negligent homicide" be uttered?

In a telephone interview, Rudolfo Perez Jr., director of the Phoenix office of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund), said that his office was initially concerned with the County Attorney’s decision to prosecute Rico. "We asked," Perez said, "is the County Attorney being fair in the way the law is being applied?" Knowing that "young minorities are prosecuted far more often than non-minorities for similar crimes," MALDEF contacted the County Attorney’s office. After presenting the county attorney’s office with a similar case, one in which a Grand Canyon University student and father had accidentally shot his son while cleaning a gun, MALDEF questioned why this white father had not been prosecuted (and even been allowed to leave the state!) while Rico had been singled out. Unfortunately, this strategy backfired. Instead of dropping the charges against Rico, the county attorney filed charges against the Grand Canyon University father within two weeks. MALDEF pursued the case no further (Perez Jr).

Evidence that racism and ethnocentrism taints the application of criminal law is overwhelming. We have only to look at racially and ethnically disproportionate prison populations to suspect this. But paradoxically, legal and political structures are hard pressed to admit that "selective prosecution" exists. Selective prosecution, singling out a person or group for prosecution based on ethnicity, race, gender, etc., while under-prosecuting other persons or groups, is "available in theory but unattainable in practice" (Cole 331). While the Supreme Court has acknowledged the potential for such abuses, the burden of proof is tremendously high. As David Cole explains, "To establish selective prosecution, a defendant must prove that the prosecutor singled him (her) out and did not prosecute others engaged in the same conduct" (331) (emphasis mine). And yet the defendant cannot gain access to prosecutorial records, documents, etc. until such proof has been met, creating the classic Catch-22 situation. Further, if the defense does not introduce "selective-prosecution theory" during the trial by objecting to the introduction of evidence, the selective prosecution appeal is waived (Cole 331). For Vanessa Rico, the standard may be impossible since the County Attorney’s office quickly selected a second case for prosecution, this time a poor but white single mother.

Criminologist Clarice Feinman notes, "Women who have been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated have been disproportionately from the lower socioeconomic class and members of ethnic or racial minority groups" and that "hypocrisy" is the norm in the application and enforcement of law (Feinman 15). Further, Ngaire Naffine calls into question fundamental biases and blind spots that exist in the concept of criminality itself. "Crime is also something that men are expected to do, because they are men, and women are expected not to do, because we are women." Although men are the "chosen subjects" of study in the mass majority of cases, "maleness or masculinity are hardly ever mentioned as a possibly significant variable" (Naffine 6). Building on Naffine’s and Feinman’s suppositions, crime committed by women may be prone to a deeply pathological interpretation.

When the especially heinous crime of infanticide became known, "unmarried mothers were constructed as the prime suspects for child murders" (16). In Great Britain, laws were enacted against infanticide in response to this perceived "moral decline." But these laws were focused on unmarried mothers. "The unmarried mother was the most dangerous of all, not only to her infant but also to the social order. The married mother (conversely) existed within a restrictive system of tutelage which gave her husband almost complete governance over her" (24). To Smart, this suggests that "the focus was less on the infant than the sexual and reproductive behavior of a woman who had no man to support her" (17). Infanticide, then, became stereotyped as a crime committed by poor, often minority, sexually deviant women. A precedent had been set, which still persists today, concerning the "construction of poor women as dangerous mothers in legal discourse" (23).

"During the nineteenth century ministers (too) built up the notion that motherhood is a full-time job for which women are especially fitted by nature" (Sered 92). Even in the context of illness, both parents most often see the death of a child as a failure on the part of the mother, thanks to this increased investment in motherhood and domesticity. Of course, notions of "nature" as they relate to the Divine have become increasingly disassociated in the modern era. But, as Sered argues, the "power of humans to ensure children’s health" has changed the framework, not the argument (Sered 93).

All this emphasis on domesticity then, becomes aligned not only with women as a population, but with their very nature. How does society make sense of a woman and mother who utterly fails in her "calling" by allowing a child to die in her care? Articulating a mother’s experience, Jeanette Cooperman says that one of the essential characteristics of housework and motherhood is that it is "isolated" and "round-the-clock" (6). When a woman such as Vanessa Rico has a momentary lapse, forgetting her motherly duties, she violates a social assumption about the very essence of motherhood. The loss of a child and its profound consequences for the mother are overshadowed by this more fundamental violation. Of course, this violation might be nullified if the perpetrator represents traditional motherhood in other ways, residing in a financially stable, two-parent home, or displaying the ‘correct’ ethnicity or race. In Vanessa Rico’s case, however, all these factors work against that perception. Rico, apparently, epitomizes the antithesis of ideal motherhood.

The Conclusion

Since her conviction, Rico has been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She will likely remain in jail until a determination can be made concerning her citizenship status. Her two remaining children, who are currently in protective custody, are U.S. citizens. This means that, should Vanessa Rico be deported, she will lose her two living children as well. This process of "determination," however, could take months (Sowers). In the meantime, another mother will soon face state prosecution in the drowning death of her child.

As bell hooks rightly concludes, "…[S]exism, racism, and class exploitation constitute interlocking systems of domination" (615). The difficulty in analyzing the case of Vanessa Rico is that no single factor can be isolated as the impetus for her prosecution. It is in the combination of all of these factors that Rico found herself the focus of increased surveillance and suspicion by the state. Time and time again, in interviews, Rico repeatedly asked why she was being singled out while both the legal authorities and the media treated other parents sympathetically. But overall, Rico accepted her fate without much consternation. The psychological guilt that all parents feel when faced with the preventable death of a child no doubt played a role in this acceptance. Already feeling guilty, she might even feel relief to be punished, an aid in the healing process. For a grieving mother already living in a personal prison, the external one might seem incidental.

For the rest of us, however, those who dismiss this prosecution as a just reward for the crime of irresponsibility, it is a stern warning. We are no longer being judged on the sins of commission, but on the sins of omission as well, and culpability is being measured, not by concrete fact, but by perception. For mothers, particularly poor or ethnically and racially targeted mothers, the stakes have been raised exponentially. Ambiguous standards have become the norm, and the everyday potentialities associated with active, inquisitive children have become the topic of state surveillance. Motherhood is no longer a "full-time job." It now requires the omnipresent and omniscient vigilance of a goddess. The archaic "cult of true womanhood" is not dead; it has been resurrected as a state-sponsored religion

Works Cited

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