With more than 100 supporters packing a Sylva courtroom, Christina Fiske admitted to a judge that she killed her newborn baby girl a year ago in an apartment near Western Carolina University and then threw her with other trash in a dumpster near a Franklin movie theater where she worked.

“I want to apologize for the situation and all the trouble it caused,” Fiske, 22, said just before the judge sentenced her to a minimum of 94 months in prison.

Fiske and her lawyers had arranged to plead guilty to second-degree murder as part of an arrangement with the district attorney’s office. The plea came on Feb. 26, what would have been the child’s first birthday.

“Like all higher life forms, this baby depended on a mother for survival. To have its life snuffed out by the mother almost defies imagination,” Judge James Baker said as he sentenced Fiske.

“I hope you are able to reach peace with your Creator,” the judge added.

Despite the plea arrangement that was announced as court began a few minutes after 10 a.m. on Feb. 26, a full day of testimony ensued. Fiske’s attorneys argued that there were “extraordinary” mitigating factors, and therefore petitioned the judge to sentence Fiske to a prison term less than the 94 month minimum for second-degree murder.

They failed to convince the judge.

“There are no extraordinary mitigating factors present. The only extraordinary thing about this case is that a mother killed her daughter,” District Attorney Charlie Hipps argued in his closing.

Tears flowed freely from her supporters as the sentence was announced, but Fiske herself remained stoic during that part of the proceedings. She had shed tears and trembled intermittently throughout the day, and she and her mother sat close to each other and hugged often during breaks.

Seated two rows behind the district attorney’s tables were child advocacy professionals from throughout Western North Carolina. They wore blue and pink ribbons; the blue for child abuse awareness, the pink in memory of Jessica Nicole Fiske, the name of the baby who would have been celebrating its first birthday.

“We’re most concerned that people realize this kind of abuse is a reality, and we need to find a way to prevent it,” said Allison Best-Teague, executive director of Haywood’s Kids Advocacy Resource Effort.

Because Fiske had admitted guilt by accepting the plea arrangement, she avoided a first-degree murder trial. That arrangement, however, led to a day of testimony that contrasted markedly with what might have occurred in a jury trial: attorneys for the state tried to show the heinous nature of the crime and how Fiske had tried to cover it up; defense attorneys tried to convince the judge that putting her in prison was not in the best interest of the state.

Macon County Sheriff’s Det. Robbie Holland was the law enforcement officer who was called to the landfill when workers there discovered the body. During his graphic testimony about the injuries sustained as the corpse went through the trash baler, Fiske began weeping for the first time.

As an assistant district attorney presented photos of the corpse as evidence for the judge, she passed them by defense attorney Randy Seago. Fiske avoided looking at them. Seago asked that just two of the four photos be entered as exhibits, but Judge Baker accepted all four.

“For sentencing purposes,” he said.

Jackson County Det. Linda Sutton then explained how Fiske had called the sheriff’s department on Feb. 28, two days after the baby’s birth in her boyfriend’s apartment and the same day it was found at the landfill. Fiske said a girl named “Amanda” had left a message on her answering machine about giving birth to a baby who was “in the toilet and not moving.” Law enforcement officers began looking in earnest for a Western Carolina University student named Amanda.

By March 2, five days after the baby was born, three days after the body was discovered, and in her third interview with Sutton, Fiske admitted killing the baby to detectives. Her boyfriend, identified in court as David Parleir, was the first person to whom Fiske admitted the crime. With her mom at her apartment but not in the same room, Fiske wrote a two-paragraph, signed statement saying she had given birth on the toilet, cut the umbilical chord with a pocket knife, and a few minutes later suffocated the baby so its noises wouldn’t be heard by anyone.

Sutton said that while Fiske was giving her statement that night, she demonstrated with a beanie baby how she had used her hands to cover the child’s chest, neck, mouth and nose. After suffocating the child, Fiske told detectives she got up from the ground by putting one hand on the toilet and the other on the child’s chest, putting her full weight on the baby girl.

Seago’s defense to try and get a reduced sentence focused on three areas - Fiske’s character before and after the crime, her emotional health and her mental health.

As he opened his defense, Seago submitted a binder several inches thick with letters of support for Fiske. Then several character witnesses came to the stand, including Franklin High School Principal Gary Shields and Macon County Board of Commissioners Chairman Harold Corbin.

Winston-Salem clinical psychologist Jerry Noble also testified. Seago tried to show that, although Fiske was not criminally insane, she had psychological problems that should be considered mitigating factors.
Noble said his tests showed Fiske was sometimes psychotic and was a person who would over-react to stress. He described several psychological disorders that he believed Fiske displayed, and said she had - in a two-year period - been through the divorce of her parents, the break-up of her first real relationship with a young man, her mother’s breast cancer and her grandfather’s death.

On the night of the murder, “Christina did not understand the nature of the situation and had trouble controlling her actions,” Noble testified.

Assistant District Attorney Alan Leonard, who handled most of the state’s case, argued that Fiske did have control of her actions. He pointed out that she cut the umbilical cord, cleaned up the bathroom, put the baby in a bag with the bloody towel and the afterbirth, drove it to Franklin and put it in a dumpster she knew would soon be filled with trash.

“Does this indicate maybe that she had control of her actions?” Leonard asked the psychologist.
Seago called 10 witnesses, including Lenaire Harrison, Fiske’s mother.

She described Fiske as an accomplished young lady who had the full support of her family and friends.
“She has always been joy to have around,” Harrison said.

In closing, Seago argued that there were four “extraordinary mitigating factors,” including Fiske’s exemplary life until the the death of her child, what she has done since death of the child, the events in her personal life that could have caused emotional and psychological problems, and the evidence that she was suffering from mental illness at the time of the baby’s delivery.

“We contend if you look at all the evidence, including the mental health definition, that the voluntary manslaughter range of incarceration would be appropriate punishment,” Seago told the judge.

After it was over, Hipps said the state was satisfied with the plea.

“We wanted her to acknowledge that she murdered the child, and we believe we built mitigating factors into the case by accepting the plea arrangement,” Hipps said.

Det. Robbie Holland, hurrying from the courtroom, seemed relieved the case was over.

“It’s time to move on. We should be here to celebrate the birthday and life of a baby, instead we’re dealing with the consequences of killing a baby.”

 

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