TAMPA, Fla. (Court TV) — Attorneys for a college student accused of giving birth and then leaving her infant in her dorm’s trash can are fighting to keep key testimony from a prosecution witness out of her trial.
Brianna Moore is facing multiple charges after she allegedly killed her newborn baby shortly after delivery. (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)
Brianna Moore, 21, is charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child, child neglect, unlawfully moving a dead body and failure to report a death of a child.
In a motion filed on Monday, Moore’s defense asked a judge to bar a police officer from testifying about surveillance video that allegedly showed the defendant on campus before the incident.
The video in question allegedly shows Moore walking onto the University of Tampa campus prior to the incident. While the video itself shows nothing relevant to the case, a police officer who viewed the video then remarked that the defendant “appeared to him to be ‘clearly pregnant’ prior to the incident.” Prosecutors have said the video in question was destroyed and no longer exists.
“Florida appellate courts have repeatedly cautioned against allowing witnesses to summarize or characterize recordings that the jury themselves cannot see, particularly when the State had controlled the evidence,” the defense wrote. “Such testimony is an impermissible veiled argument that the Defendant must have known that she is pregnant.”
Moore’s defense suggested that she had no idea she was pregnant up until the time she gave birth, saying, “All the people who did interact in person with the Defendant when she was pregnant uniformly deny that they perceived her as pregnant, and they also uniformly deny that she appeared to perceive herself as pregnant. Officer Botteron’s ‘clearly pregnant’ perception from watching the video is therefore mere ‘retrospective clarity’ (a charitable description of the phenomenon of the officer’s remarkable ‘insight’).”
Moore’s defense has also filed a motion asking the court to consider impaneling a 12-person jury for trial, though doing so would be inconsistent with Florida law. Under current state law, only capital cases are heard by 12-person juries; all other cases are heard by a group of six.
Moore is due to appear in court this week, where a judge is also expected to address her pending motion seeking release on bond. She has been behind bars in the Hillsborough County jail since her arrest on Oct. 30, 2024. In her motion for release, Moore asked to be allowed to live with her grandmother in Mississippi.
