Woman accused of death of her son after third fentanyl overdose to appear in court in Baton Rouge on Monday

BATON ROUGE — A woman who turned down a plea deal that would have given her a 30-year prison sentence after her 2-year-old son died from his third fentanyl overdose in two months is due in court Monday on second-degree murder charges.

If convicted, 30-year-old Whitney Ard would face life in prison. In the spring, prosecutors rejected a deal that would have earned her a prison sentence of up to five years for negligent homicide. Having already served the time, she could have been released Beginning of next year.

Rescue workers resuscitated young Mitchell Robinson III with Narcan after two fentanyl overdoses. A third overdose killed him.

“The present case concerns a two-year-old child who was murdered through direct actions and/or inaction of his mother and primary caregiver, Whitney Ard,” the state said in documents filed last week to limit what Questions could be addressed in court.

“The child … consumed and overdosed on fentanyl, a Schedule II narcotic, three times over the course of two months while in the care of his mother,” the state said. He was revived on April 12, 2022 and June 2, 2022. After an overdose on June 26, 2022, all efforts to save him failed. The state said he had fentanyl in his system at the time of his death.

While Ard offered to plead guilty to negligent homicide and accept a five-year prison sentence, the state offered her to confess to manslaughter and take a 30-year prison sentence – 10 years less than the maximum sentence. Ard rejected the plea and opted for a trial.

Ard initially had been arrested for negligent homicide, but during her investigation police learned that Robinson had been hospitalized twice for breathing problems and had tested positive for Narcan, a drug used to treat fentanyl overdoses. A grand jury declared the boy's death a second-degree murder.

The death also prompted a look at the Department of Children and Family Services' practices. The state's inspector general said DCFS was unaware that Narcan was used on the Child, and said the agency took “no action at all” after the boy’s first two hospitalizations.

After each of the first two overdoses the child was released to his mother.

According to prosecutors, the boy's older sister told investigators that the child had eaten some of his mother's pills.

“When her mother found out that her brother [ate] After he took some of the pills, her mother knocked him out and sent him to bed,” they wrote.

Before the trial begins, a judge been asked to set a limit on evidence. The State expressed concern that Ard could introduce evidence of how other cases of overdose in children were treated, and that the prosecutors just bring up Cases in which Robinson was involved.