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The Case of Rosa Jimenez
📻 Episode #498
🎙️ Hosted by Maggie Freleng
📅 Dec 02, 2024
About This Episode
In August 2005, 22-year-old Rosa Jimenez was sentenced to 99 years in prison for murder and injury to a child after a 21-month-old child she was babysitting choked on a wad of paper towels. The prosecution’s experts testified that Rosa had to have shoved the towels down little Bryan’s throat. And Rosa, an undocumented Mexican…
Case status as carried in this site's original 2026 profiles. Independent record verification is rolling out episode by episode — statuses are being re-checked against court and registry sources and date-stamped as verified.
The Case
In August 2005, 22-year-old Rosa Jimenez was sentenced to 99 years in prison for murder and injury to a child after a 21-month-old child she was babysitting choked on a wad of paper towels. The prosecution’s experts testified that Rosa had to have shoved the towels down little Bryan’s throat. And Rosa, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who didn’t speak English, had woefully inadequate defense. Years later, several top pediatric ENT experts concluded Bryan’s death had been accidental. And Rosa was exonerated almost two decades later.
Learn more about the practice of shackling incarcerated women who are giving birth: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/childbirth-behind-bars-shackling-maggie-freleng-1234657748/
The Innocence Project https://innocenceproject.org/
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:05:02“Speaker 4: going to do. This is what I decided to do, Speaker 4: and I'm going to do it and no one is Speaker 4: going to stop you. Speaker 1: Do you regret coming here? Speaker 4: That's a hard question, yes and no. Speaker 1: Life in the United States would turn out to be”
00:20:25“Speaker 4: It was a disaster. Speaker 1: Rosa sat through a week long trial believing that, even Speaker 1: though she was confused by the proceedings and what people Speaker 1: were saying, everything was going to be okay. Speaker 4: I believe in the United States system. I believe the yeah,”
00:36:36“Speaker 1: Brenda Roses little girl was an adult now in her twenties. Speaker 1: Vanessa was at the wedding as well, and she says Speaker 1: the day was complicated. Speaker 7: Because you had, you know, her daughter was getting married. Speaker 7: It's like this most important moment. And there was some”
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