My daughter, Jennifer Irigoyen, and her unborn baby, Evan were murdered on February 3, 2019 in Queens, NY.   Due to the enactment of N.Y.'s Reproductive Health Act  the charges for killing the baby were dropped. This is because the law eliminates Fetal Homicide from the state penal code. To add insult to injury, the 'Discovery Reform Law', enacted on January 1, 2020, has allowed for numerous extensions and delays in the processing of this case in the criminal judicial system.  How? Well, in essence, this new law requires both the Prosecution and Defense to submit certain documentation [called discovery] on a strict timeline.  In theory, there are sanctions to both sides for noncompliance.  But in actuality, the defense has been allowed to stall the process while avoiding sanctions, mostly due to an amendment to this law in April 2020 which has verbiage clearly relaxing the rules for the defense side only.  Therefore, the Defense in this case, and in my very strong opinion, has been given leverage and has been coddled by the court system. 

RHA and The Discovery Reform Law have contributed to the injustices played out in this case, not COVID as we are all led to believe.  

TIMELINE:

To give a history of all the court dates and extensions, the last in-person court date was on March 4th 2020, just before COVID hit; the day before my daughter's birthday.  A plus one month extension had already been granted from the previous court date of January 29th.

So, on March 4th, once again, the Defense asked for yet another six week extension.  Judge Deborah Stevens Modica nearly accommodated them by giving them another one month extension, to April 2nd.  The family was shocked, and dismayed with this latest turn of events. We left the courtroom saddened and disheartened, but hopeful that this would be the last extension granted to the defense [as we were assured] and we could finally move forward with the case. Unfortunately, the whole court system shut down the very next week due to the COVID outbreak, and any dates set after that, were just administrative adjournments, which is fancy talk for 'nothing happening'.  So, after April 2nd, there were two more adjournments, May 7th and June 12th. 

I don't understand why this is being allowed. It's clear that COVID presented with very unforeseen circumstances.  However, it's not fair that the defense uses COVID as an excuse not to comply with protocol.  This bureaucratic system of delays just causes pain to the families.  We are all hurting because of this.

The next court date was set for June 17th, 2020, virtually.  We were not allowed to attend.  Had we been meeting in court, we would have been allowed.  The next video court appearance was set for July 20th.  We weren't allowed to attend that one either.  And the next, September 14th, 2020, and the next, October 16th 2020, same thing, virtual attendance but we, the victim's family can't see what's happening during these proceedings.  Why not?

As of April 2021, and we still had no clear understanding as to where we were in the judicial process.  There was a virtual court date on February 4th 2021, two years and one day after my daughter's murder.  We were not allowed to attend.  The next court date of April 20th, 2021 turned out to be virtual as a last minute change, at which time we were allowed to watch the proceedings. 

And, to make matters worse, the date in the NYC Department of Correction's website system [for a very long time] showed the next court date to be December 22, 2022.  When I asked why, I was told to just disregard that because "the system is always wrong". That's a terrible thing to say to a victim's mother, a mother who lost her daughter and unborn grandchild.  You're saying to me that the victims and their families don't matter.  Don't pay attention to those dates.  Well, which dates should we pay attention to then?  

This is what we want: We want the court to stop granting adjournments and proceed with the judicial process, so we can get Justice For Jenny and Baby Evan. We cannot heal from this terrible loss if we are being held in limbo like this. 

We want 'Justice For Jenny and Baby Evan' now!!! 

Justice For Jenny!