YOLO COUNTY—The 25-year-old Woodland mother who has been accused of leaving her infant son to die in a remote area earlier this year will stand trial in April for the charge of murder.
Samantha Lee Green was arraigned Friday in Yolo Superior Court in Woodland before Judge David Rosenberg. Her 19-day-old baby, Justice Rees, was found dead in a Knights Landing-area slough last February.
The trial was originally set to begin November 6 after a nearly week-long preliminary hearing that recounted the baby’s final days. Photos showed a deceased Justice in a onesie outfit lying in the brush.
Green’s attorney’s argued that she had no intention of killing her son because she was disoriented from taking drugs. They asked for a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors argued, however, that there was enough evidence to charge her with murder.
According to preliminary hearing testimony, Green picked up Justice on Tuesday, February 24 at the residence in Woodland she shared with Frank Rees—her fiancé and father of the baby—and his parents. They had argued at nearby gas station about Rees wanting to go visit a woman in Knights Landing for sex. Green did not want to meet the woman and left Rees alone.
She later drove with the baby to Knights Landing to find Rees, and was found the next day drug-addled and disoriented near a levee road at Rough Cut Slough, yelling for help and claiming she had been kidnapped. The infant’s body was found later that day.
Investigators testified that Green had told them she had been wandering through the slough and passed out next to her baby.
The trial is expected to last three weeks and is scheduled to begin April 25. Prosecuting Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Ryan Couzens told Judge Rosenberg that he anticipated defense motions seeking to move the trial out of Yolo County and to disqualify the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office from prosecuting the case.
Rosenberg plans to hear the motions January 12.
