A Los Angeles judge ruled Jasmine Hickman was legally insane when she killed her 7-year-old daughter and newborn baby in 2017, meaning she will not stand trial and will be sent to a state mental institution. Her case has also become tied to a broader dispute o
A judge’s decision landed in a downtown courtroom Tuesday morning, overturning what most people expect after a confession.
Jasmine Hickman, 35, admitted that she killed her 7-year-old daughter and her newborn baby in 2017. But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George Lomeli ruled that she was legally insane at the time of the killings, directing that she be held in a state mental institution rather than prison.
“I know if I had been in my right mind I would have never done what I did,” Hickman told the judge, according to City News Service.
The ruling means Hickman will not stand trial for the slayings.
On Oct. 19, 2017, Hickman was seen in the street breastfeeding her newborn daughter, Kamile, while walking with her eldest child, 7-year-old Jaliya. Court documents say all three—Hickman and both children—were naked and covered in talcum powder. Later, Hickman and the girls were found unconscious in a nearby parking lot. Both girls had been suffocated to death.
In court Tuesday, Hickman pleaded guilty to both killings before Lomeli made the legal-insanity finding, according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. The records show she was diagnosed with schizaoaffective disorder.
As the case moved toward its disposition, it also drew attention to a different thread running through Los Angeles County child welfare.
The court case was described as one of several in recent years that has raised concerns about how the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services handles reports of abuse and neglect. Those questions come into view through a whistleblower lawsuit filed by former county social worker Dennis Finn.
Finn’s lawsuit alleged that. in the days before the girls’ deaths. both the victims’ grandmother and Hickman’s landlord called a county hotline and reported that Hickman was acting erratically. Finn claimed that none of the calls were “properly evaluated, recorded, or acted upon,” language attributed to his lawsuit.
The suit also alleged that a social worker wanted to recommend more immediate intervention, but a supervisor at the county’s child welfare agency overruled the employee and downgraded the response “despite two prior calls, a 911 call and a supposed police visit.”
Finn further alleged he was wrongfully terminated after providing records about the Hickman case to state investigators who were concerned about the county’s handling of such incidents. The county later settled his lawsuit for $1.85 million.
The Tuesday ruling changed the path for Hickman’s case. Lomeli’s order keeps the focus on her mental state at the time of the murders—while the dispute raised by Finn’s lawsuit continues to center on what the system did, and did not do, in the days leading up to the deaths.
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