The New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled that body camera footage capturing Alexee Trevizo's confession about hiding her newborn baby in a hospital trash can cannot be used by prosecutors in her murder trial. Trevizo, who was 19 at the time of her 2023 arrest, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence after hospital staff found her newborn son deceased in a trash can.

The footage shows Trevizo admitting to hospital staff and her mother that she disposed of the baby in the trash following the discovery. However, the court unanimously decided that statements made in the hospital room in front of a police officer are protected under doctor-patient confidentiality and thus inadmissible at trial. Additionally, the court upheld the Fifth Judicial District Court’s ruling that surveillance video of Trevizo inside the hospital and police body camera footage are also inadmissible.

According to the bodycam, Trevizo’s doctor entered her hospital room accompanied by two officers and informed her and her mother about the dead newborn found in the trash, which had to be reported. Justice Michael E. wrote in the court's opinion that the doctor, 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."

The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator later determined the newborn died by homicide, concluding the child died from entrapment after being placed and tied inside a plastic trash bag beneath bloody paper towels and other garbage.

Trevizo’s mother waited outside a locked bathroom door for about 20 minutes before the high school senior opened it, as hospital staff stood by. The case remains pending without the bodycam confession and related footage as evidence.

Sources