A stillbirth and Facebook post expressing her grief landed her in prison for over 2 years … – CNN

“Why would you be sorry? Why would you be sorry, Patience?” Patience Rousseau, then 26, was shivering on the doorstep of the house she was living in with her two children as the sheriff’s deputy repeated her question. The Humboldt County, Nevada, sheriff’s deputy was questioning Rousseau about a Facebook post she had made a few weeks earlier that expressed grief about her stillbirth and mentioned the name she gave her baby posthumously, body camera footage shows. “I’m so sorry, Abel,” Rousseau had written in the post. The mother was in shock that day in May 2018 as several law enforcement officers, some in tactical gear, stood outside the rural Winnemucca home to serve a search warrant. “I had a miscarriage, OK? A miscarriage. Why are you guys here over a f**king miscarriage?” Rousseau responded to the deputy. The single mother, who was already struggling to afford care for her two young boys, was dealing with complicated feelings of ambivalence and guilt about her unplanned pregnancy and stillbirth, her attorney said. Rousseau told the deputies she had been taking large quantities of cinnamon and lifting heavy things while pregnant “to have a miscarriage.” Deputies walked to a cross that was
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