By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH | City News Service
A woman admitted Tuesday that she killed her newborn and 7-year-old daughters, with a judge ruling that she was insane at the time of the crime.
Jasmine Raquel Hickman, now 35, broke down in tears in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom as she said she was “so sorry.”
“… I know if I had been in my right mind I would have never done what I did,” she said.
“They really deserved better than that,” Hickman said. “Now all we have is our memories.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli — who told Hickman that she could spend the rest of her life in a state mental facility — said he hopes she is able to get the help she deserves.
Hickman was charged with two counts each of murder and assault on a child causing death, along with the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders, in connection with the October 2017 killings of her 38-day-old daughter, Camille, and her 7-year-old daughter, Jaliya.
The defendant withdrew her not guilty plea during Tuesday’s hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, leaving just her not guilty plea by reason of insanity.
The judge noted that he had considered Hickman’s “admissions of guilt” and found her guilty but ruled soon afterward that she was insane at the time of the killings.
Hickman and her daughters were found unresponsive, nude and covered in baby powder on the parking lot pavement outside a Numero Uno Market on San Pedro Street in South Los Angeles in the early morning hours of Oct. 19, 2017, Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Teymouri told the judge, noting that the girls had been suffocated.
The woman’s newborn daughter was pronounced dead at the scene, and her older daughter died the next day at a hospital, according to records from the county medical examiner’s office.
“The defendant was interviewed by police and admitted that she had intentionally killed her daughters and provided the police with her explanation for her actions,” the prosecutor said.
Shortly after the case was filed, the District Attorney’s Office had said that Hickman claimed after regaining consciousness that God had asked her to sacrifice her children, so she suffocated them.
In a statement read on her behalf in court, Hickman’s mother, Barbara, said her life “changed completely” when she “woke up to horrifying news on the television that devastated me and my entire family tremendously.”
“…Why did this happen? This is what was constantly going on in my mind,” the woman wrote, with her daughter bursting into tears in court. “We miss both of our babies more than words can ever express.”
Directly addressing her daughter, she wrote, “Jasmine, we are here today to let you know that we love you, we miss you and we forgive you. Our hearts hold no bitterness, only a desire for healing and restoration and God’s best for your life. We will continue to pray for you always, asking God to strengthen you, heal you, guide you, and surround you with his unfailing love and grace.”
Deputy Public Defender Robin Ginsburg noted in court that two doctors who evaluated her client agreed that Hickman was “not faking her mental illness.”