The mother of “Baby June,” a dead newborn found floating in Boynton Beach Inlet over five years ago, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to killing her child.
Arya Singh, 30, pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child, a first-degree felony, and abuse of a dead human body, a second-degree felony.
She could have received a maximum sentence of 45 years, 30 years for the first charge and 15 for the second, had a jury found her guilty of the previous charges of second-degree murder.
Singh had told detectives that she had given birth alone in 2018, in a hotel bathroom, that the baby girl landed in water, and she thought it had passed out. A day later, she disposed of the body in the Inlet. An off-duty firefighter found the body on the first day of June. For four years, detectives had no idea who the baby was or how she had gotten there, so they nicknamed her “Baby June.”
The Medical Examiner ruled that the baby had died by asphyxiation before she was found floating in the inlet, and that she died by homicide.
DNA evidence later led detectives to identify Singh as the mother.
A student at Florida Atlantic University at the time, Singh took the baby to the Inlet because she didn’t know what to do with her, said Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Detective Brittany Christoffel, the lead detective on the case, after the arrest in December last year. When detectives confronted Singh that day, she was “very nervous,” worried about herself and her future.
Shira Moolten/South Florida Sun Sentinel
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, forefront, and sheriff’s detectives announce the arrest of Arya Singh in the death of “Baby June,” the newborn whose body was found off the Boynton Beach Inlet in 2018.Singh appeared in Palm Beach County court Wednesday wearing a mask, represented by defense attorney Greg Salnick. The father of the newborn was also present over Zoom, but declined to speak.
“This is a tragic and unfortunate situation,” Salnick told reporters as he left the courtroom Wednesday, adding that Singh is happy “this matter is behind her.”
After her sentence, Singh must also serve 10 years’ probation; she received credit for 231 days already spent in jail.
“Ms. Singh went to a hotel room alone and gave birth to a child. As a result of her actions or inactions, the baby died,” Marc Freeman, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office, said in a statement. “Ms. Singh never called 911, she never sought medical treatment, she never asked for help for her child, and she never dropped the baby off at a fire station. As the child’s mother, under the circumstances she placed herself in, she was the only person who could have saved that child’s life. Instead she disposed of her baby in the Boynton Inlet, in the hopes no one would know what she had done. There must be a consequence for that. And in this case, the consequence is 14 years of prison followed by 10 years of probation. Justice has been served with this sentence.”
The crime of killing a newborn less than 24 hours after it was born is called “neonaticide,” and dates back to the beginning of human civilization. But neonaticide also lacks precedent in the U.S legal system. Punishments for mothers vary from probation to psychiatric treatment to life in prison. In some cases, prosecutors seek the death penalty.
Most neonaticide cases, like Singh’s, end in plea bargains, said Michelle Oberman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law who studies the ethical issues surrounding motherhood. This makes it difficult to assess whether the legal system is handling the crime consistently.
Prosecutors in Singh’s case likely were not able to prove “intentionality” in the killing of the baby, she said, which explains the manslaughter charge as opposed to a murder charge.
Some neonaticide cases have become the subject of national fixation over the years, like the “Prom Mom” killer, Melissa Drexler, who gave birth in the bathroom of her high school prom in New Jersey in 1997, then suffocated the baby, before returning to the dance. She also pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
South Florida has seen its own share of neonaticide and infant abandonment cases. In 2012, Alexandria Sladon-Marler, 33, was accused of leaving her newborn baby in a trash bin outside of a hotel in Fort Lauderdale. She had given birth, then was taken from the hotel to the hospital for medical treatment. Hours later, police found her baby, dead, in a trash bin outside of the hotel.
Sladon-Marler was charged with aggravated manslaughter, but was judged incompetent to stand trial and was placed in the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Experts who study neonaticide say that the mothers who commit the crime often feel isolated, lack access to prenatal care, work full time and don’t have the income necessary to care for a baby. Often, they hide the pregnancy or deny it to themselves.
“It’s worth contemplating what we think is accomplished by a 14-year sentence that we’re paying for,” Oberman said. “So, what are we getting by sending her away?”
Rather than rehabilitating these mothers or deterring similar crimes, sentences in these cases tend to serve the “expressive” function of law, she said, sending a message about society’s values, in this case that a baby’s death must be avenged.
“In Texas, they would have gone after more,” said Martha Smithey, a sociology professor at Texas Tech University who studies neonaticides. She’s used to seeing cases where prosecutors go after sentences of over 40 years or even the death penalty.
Fourteen years could actually be on the lower end of sentences, she said.
Like Oberman, she questioned the purpose of prison sentences in neonaticide cases. Most of the mothers she sees in her research are teenage girls who “lack the agency to avoid unwanted pregnancy,” and for whom sex education, birth control and abortion access would more adequately prevent tragedies than the threat of punishment.
“Sentencing these women to prison or any kind of punitive response might work for some people’s idea of justice,” Smithey said, “but it does not address the cause and it’s certainly not going to be a deterrent effect.”
Meanwhile, the idea that 14 years in prison would serve to rehabilitate mothers like Singh is “laughable,” Oberman said.
“I no longer hear anybody making the argument that prison will heal this person,” she added. “I’ve heard tough-on-crime judges look at these cases and say ‘if I send you away, you’ll be completely broken.'”
