Top Court Upholds Man’s Homicide Conviction For Killing Unborn Child

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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from a defendant who was charged with murder after killing his girlfriend and her unborn child, the court document reads.

Peter Ronchi was convicted in 2012 of killing Yuliya Galperina and her unborn child nearly three years prior, WCVP reported. Ronchi, who is serving two life sentences, appealed the verdict by alleging he did not intentionally kill the unborn child when he repeatedly stabbed Galperina, however the court rejected the notion and said that his argument was “strained at best,” according to the document.

“By ending the mother’s life, he destroyed the viable fetus through the cessation of life-sustaining maternal blood flow,” the court ruled.

Galperina was nine-months into her pregnancy and was due to deliver one week after she was killed, the court document reads. The court determined that since the child was full-term, “there was no substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice in the purported diminution of the Commonwealth’s burden to prove that the fetus was viable.”

Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL) praised the court’s decision in a Wednesday press release sent to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We applaud the Supreme Judicial Court’s life-affirming acknowledgement of the humanity of the unborn child in its recognition of the fetus as the second victim of a maternal murder, even without a direct traumatic injury to the unborn child,” Patricia Stewart, Esq., MCFL’s executive director, said. “In so ruling, the court rejected outmoded ways of thinking about the status of an unborn child in instances of violent crime.”

Myrna Maloney Flynn, MCLF president, said in the press release that “it’s excellent that the Court unambiguously states that not one but two innocent lives were lost in this horrific crime: those of a pregnant woman and a preborn human being.”

Flynn pointed to a “double standard” in The Boston Globe’s Tuesday coverage of the ruling in which the article refers to the fetus as an “unborn child” and as an “unborn son.”

“In its decision, the Court said that the accused ‘committed an act of violence against a woman who was nine months pregnant’ and ‘destroyed a viable fetus.’ Where is the Court’s defense of fetuses who die every day in this state from direct acts of violence that characterize abortions? How can the Globe use the phrase ‘unborn child’ in a story like this but avoid it in any article about so-called ‘abortion care’ or ‘reproductive health’?” Flynn said. “Moreover, the Court’s ruling only highlights the biggest inconsistency of all: that it is legal to end the life of any fetus up until the moment of birth in this state by means of an abortion.”

Ronchi’s attorney did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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