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Mom found guilty of second-degree murder in toddler's fatal fentanyl overdose
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BATON ROUGE — A jury decided Tuesday that the mother of a 2-year-old who died after his third fentanyl overdose was guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting claims that the woman herself was also a victim.
Lawyers for Whitney Ard had argued that she was no more than negligent when her son Mitchell Robinson III died in June 2022. They sought her acquittal but had said previously that if a crime occurred she should serve no more than 5 years in prison.
Prosecutors contend that the three overdoses, taken together, warranted a murder conviction and that Ard should spend the rest of her life behind bars.
"We take these cases seriously, but we're talking about a young child and fentanyl, and fentanyl being left behind and someone that overdoses three times. People have had enough and I think the jury spoke very loudly and very quickly that this is not going to be allowed to happen," said District Attorney Hillar Moore III.
Ard will be sentenced to life in prison Oct. 17. Earlier this year she turned down a plea bargain that would have seen her sentenced to 30 years.
The boy had "more than enough fentanyl in his system to kill a veteran drug user," Assistant District Attorney Rokeya Morris said during closing arguments. She called the Ard home "basically a trap house with kids."
Prosecutors say that, in the home, investigators found 2,500 doses of fentanyl that would have been lethal. The child had been hospitalized twice previously, and required six doses of Narcan after one of his overdoses, they said.
"This is not an accidental death; it's not a one-time incident. You had two prior overdoses then you had a third one that led to death and all the other circumstances led us to the charge of second-degree murder," Moore said.
The defense argued that Ard herself was addicted and "isn't a drug dealer and isn't a killer." Lawyer Sandra James Page told jurors that Ard had been told after the previous overdoses that the boy's medical troubles were due to a seizure condition.
Page also said that because the incidents weren't reported to the Department of Children and Family Services, the fault was with the state and that Ard herself was a victim.
Prosecutors said Robinson would have turned 5 years old on Tuesday. One of his siblings had told investigators that the boy was punished after finding pills and ingesting them.
“You wouldn’t leave out chocolate for your dog, you put it away where they can’t reach it, why would you leave fentanyl out for a child," Assistant District Attorney Jaclyn Chapman said.
The jury was given the option to either find Ard not guilty or convict her of second-degree murder, manslaughter or negligent homicide. Murder carries a mandatory life term, manslaughter is punishable by up to 40 years in prison and negligent homicide carries a maximum five year term.
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