Ex-Porsche lawyer Katarina Jovanovic has been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to more than seven years in prison after they dropped their newborn baby from a window. The executive claimed to not know they were pregnant and feared that having the baby could derail their career.
Jovanovic gave birth to a child on September 12, reports International Business Times. Just ten minutes after her child was born, it was dropped out a window and fell to its death. Now, the ex-Porsche lawyer has been found guilty of manslaughter by a court in Germany. As IBT reports:
Jovanovic allegedly dropped her baby daughter from her apartment window, causing the infant to fall nearly 12 feet onto the pavement below. Passersby discovered the infant’s body under Jovanovic’s balcony. The minutes-old baby had sustained fatal injuries.
The police were alerted immediately. According to ASB Zeitung (via DailyMail), Jovanovic admitted to the crime at the beginning of the trial in April but could not explain the details of the incident to the court.
The 28-year-old reportedly gave birth to the child in secret at her home. Her lawyers claimed that she hadn’t known she was pregnant and, as such, was in “an exceptional psychological situation” at the time of the birth, reports the Daily Mail.
Her lawyers claimed that the death was an accident, meaning that Jovanovic could only be guilty of manslaughter rather than pre-meditated murder. As the Daily Mail reports:
Defence attorney Malte Hoech, 53, said: “It is a drama that affects me personally. My client did not even know that she was pregnant.
“When she suddenly held the bloody baby in her hands, she was in an exceptional psychological situation.
“It was an accident, she dropped the baby. How the child ended up over the windowsill remains to be determined.”
However, prosecutors argued that Jovanovic was guilty of murder as she had “deliberately hidden the pregnancy.” They claimed that Jovanovic feared that “motherhood would derail her career as a legal executive at Porsche,” which they argued motivated her alleged actions.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the Heilbronn District Court convicted Jovanovic of manslaughter. She received a sentence of seven and a half years in prison.
Jovanovic’s defense attorneys will now appeal the case, as the sentence was more than the three-year-sentence that lawyers had initially demanded.