Mother charged with murder over drugged breastfeeding

A Northern California woman has been charged with murder after she allegedly breastfed her infant son shortly after ingesting large amounts of methamphetamine.

Maggie Jean Wortmon, 26, has been charged with second-degree murder – punishable by 15 years to life in prison – along with child abuse and involuntary manslaughter, the New York Times reports.

Her six-week-old son, Michael, who was found unresponsive in November in the town of Loleta.

Wortmon was already facing charges of child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter after the baby was pronounced dead at a hospital and was later found to have methamphetamine in his system.

However, earlier this week a charge of murder was added, after prosecutors said Wortmon had shown ''conscious disregard''.

''I think that her conduct is, or was, so intentionally reckless that it rises to the level of implied malice,'' said Ben McLaughlin, a deputy district attorney in Humboldt County.

''And I think that a mother who is breast-feeding using the quantity of methamphetamine she did, I think that rises to a second-degree murder charge.''

Wortmon's lawyer, MC Bruce, said she was a drug addict, not a killer, and the murder charge ''makes her out to be a terrible, horrible person who needs to be locked away for the rest of her life''.

He said she was an "impoverished Native American woman".

In 2003, a mother in Southern California, Amy Prien, was convicted of second-degree murder after breast-feeding a baby with her methamphetamine-laced milk, NYT reports.

That conviction was overturned, though Prien eventually pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.