Sabrina Butler

Sabrina Butler (born 1971) is a Mississippi woman who was eventually acquitted at a retrial after being convicted as a teenager for the alleged murder and child abuse of her nine-month-old son.

Death of baby On April 11, 1989, 18-year-old Sabrina Butler rushed her nine-month-old son, Walter Dean Butler, to the hospital after he suddenly stopped breathing. Doctors had attempted to resuscitate the child for thirty minutes, but failed, and Sabrina's baby died the same day. Sabrina told the police and medical personnel that she had left her son with a babysitter named Ester Hollis. Sabrina said Hollis's son later told her that her son had stopped breathing. She then went to Hollis, who took 10 to 15 minutes to answer, after which she took her son to the hospital. The police then proceeded to the apartment complex where Sabrina lived to interview any potential witnesses, and to locate Ester Hollis. After a thorough check of other apartments, it was discovered that Ester Hollis did not exist and had been fabricated by Sabrina.

As a result of her lies, the police came to suspect that Sabrina had murdered her son. Sabrina was interviewed later at the morgue. Sabrina said had lied out of fear and that everything was better now since she was going to be with her son.

Trial Sabrina's murder trial commenced on March 8, 1990. At the trial, prosecutors sought to prove that Sabrina's account of the events leading to her son's death were false, and that she had inflicted the fatal wounds intentionally. Sabrina did not testify at her trial. In 1990, she was convicted of capital murder and child abuse and sentenced to death. Sabrina became the only woman on Mississippi's death row. In addition, the medical examiner changed his opinion about Walter's cause of death, which he now believed occurred due to a kidney malady. However, no definitive cause of death was ever established.

Sabrina's own attorney has stated that he "doesn't know what the truth is." Her co-counsel indicated that, at best, the case should have been prosecuted as manslaughter. The jury foreperson indicated that they weren't fully convinced of Sabrina's innocence, but did have reasonable doubt.

Sabrina Butler-Porter had a book published in 2012, entitled Exonerated: The Sabrina Butler Story. She is also a storyteller in a collection of stories entitled Pruno, Ramen and a Side of Hope, Stories of Surviving Wrongful Conviction. In 2022, Elle magazine published her opinion essay about efforts to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio and summarizing claims raised by advocates that Lucio's conviction may be unreliable.