New Mexico Supreme Court Blocks Hospital Confession in Newborn Trash Can Murder Case

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a hospital-room confession from Alexee Trevizo, the Artesia teenager accused of killing her newborn son and dumping him in a trash can, cannot be used against her at trial.

Justice Michael E. Vigil wrote the opinion, upholding a Fifth Judicial District Court decision to suppress the statements, the surveillance footage, and the police body camera video captured inside Trevizo's hospital room. The ruling was reported by Fox News, Courthouse News, tampafp, and 96.3 KKOB.

What Happened at the Hospital

Trevizo, then a 19-year-old high school senior, went to Artesia General Hospital with her mother around midnight on January 27, 2023, complaining of severe lower back pain, according to Courthouse News. She denied being pregnant when staff asked, but admitted to vaginal bleeding.

Doctors gave her an IV with anti-inflammatories, a muscle relaxant, and morphine. A pregnancy test came back positive. Roughly 48 minutes later, Trevizo needed to use the bathroom and gave birth there, alone, to a baby she later described as not moving or breathing.

A hospital cleaning worker found the newborn in a trash bag about 20 minutes after that. An autopsy found free morphine in the baby's heart blood and, according to tampafp, air in the lungs along with hemorrhaging consistent with hypoxia. Findings prosecutors say show the child was born alive.

The Confession Prosecutors Wanted to Use

Dr. Heather Vaskas, Trevizo's treating physician, brought two police officers into Trevizo's hospital room, where her mother was also present, and told her the baby had been found dead in the trash. Body camera footage captured what came next.

"I'm sorry, it came out of me. I didn't know what to do," Trevizo said, according to the footage cited by Fox News. When her mother asked how big the baby was and where she'd put him, Trevizo said the baby wasn't crying and confirmed she'd placed him in the trash bag.

Prosecutors argued Trevizo didn't need Miranda warnings because she was speaking to hospital staff and her mother in front of officers, not answering direct police questioning. The New Mexico Supreme Court rejected that argument.

Why the Court Threw It Out

Justice Vigil's opinion doesn't mince words about how the confession was obtained. "Despite her unresolved medical crisis, Dr. Vaskas, without authorization, ambushed Defendant, bringing with her two armed officers who stood in the doorway of her hospital room, and disclosed her personal medical information to all persons in the room without warning," Vigil wrote, according to tampafp and Courthouse News.

The court's reasoning centers on capacity, not police misconduct alone. Trevizo was bleeding severely, had just given birth, was under the influence of morphine and other medication, and had not been given any chance to ask people to leave the room before her doctor disclosed her condition to everyone present. The justices concluded she "lacked capacity to waive her physician-patient privilege" voluntarily.

The state also argued that mandatory child-abuse reporting laws should override confidentiality once abuse is suspected. The court disagreed, per 96.3 KKOB, ruling that the legal duty to report suspected abuse to authorities doesn't strip away confidentiality protections for the underlying medical communications themselves.

The Case Now

This ruling doesn't clear Trevizo. It strips out a chunk of the evidence prosecutors were counting on, including her recorded statements, the hospital surveillance video, and the body camera footage. The case returns to district court in Eddy County, where prosecutors have not yet said how they intend to proceed, according to tampafp.

Trevizo was arrested May 10, 2023, after the autopsy results came back, and has been out on bail while the case has moved through pretrial appeals. She has maintained the baby was stillborn.

If hospitals can't bring law enforcement into a room to confirm basic facts about a suspected infant death without risking suppression of everything said, that creates real friction for how these cases get investigated in real time. Doctors are legally required to report suspected child abuse. The court's answer is that the reporting duty and the confidentiality of the patient's own statements are two separate things, and hospitals apparently need to thread that needle more carefully going forward, whatever that looks like in practice.

The New Mexico Attorney General's office and the Eddy County District Attorney have not announced a revised strategy. What evidence remains, whether investigators gathered anything independent of the suppressed hospital-room statements, and whether the case proceeds to trial at all are open questions the district court will now have to sort out.