Infant’s death
could bring 20 years

Prosecutors on Kauai drop a
murder charge as a nursing
student opts against a trial

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By Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.com

LIHUE >> A Koloa woman whose dead newborn baby was found in a garbage can behind her house last year pleaded no contest yesterday to manslaughter.

In return, the Kauai County Prosecutor's Office dropped a charge of second-degree murder against Christine Robles, 22. The plea agreement did not specify what the prosecution would recommend at her sentencing Aug. 1.

The original second-degree murder charge would have carried a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole. Robles would have had to serve a minimum of 15 years because the victim was younger than 8 years old.

Manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 20 years but no mandatory minimum.

Robles, a nursing student at Kauai Community College, gave birth to the child at her parents' home, where she lived. Her father asked a neighbor to call paramedics, stating only that she had been injured. Ambulance attendants transporting Robles to a hospital determined she had recently given birth.

A police officer searching the Robles home found the baby inside a rice sack stuffed in a trash can in the back yard. An autopsy determined the baby had suffocated.

Kauai Prosecutor Mike Soong said Robles did not give a detailed account of how the baby died, and it remains unclear whether the death was intentional.

"She has little memory of the event," Soong said yesterday.

Robles has been living at home under the supervision of her parents since the baby's death. Her trial was to have begun yesterday.