University of Kentucky cheerleader Laken Snelling has been making headlines after she was arrested in connection to the death of her baby. In light of the scandal, a Kentucky prosecutor has said she’s being judged by the public in an unfair way.
“The first human reaction is that people are mad and angry and they want someone to blame,” Ronnie Bowling, Commonwealth’s Attorney for the 34th Judicial Circuit of Kentucky, told WKYT in an interview on Tuesday, September 9.
Bowling, who does not have any affiliation with the investigation into Snelling, 21, said she has been vilified on social media before properly getting to share her side of the story in court.
“So much opinion-forming gets had before anyone hears the first real, legitimate fact, and that’s not fair to the defendants, just as much as it’s not fair to our victims,” Bowling added.
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He went on to share that prosecutors will often be proactive about looking at stories when it comes to selecting a jury, especially in a case as highly publicized as Snelling’s.
“If we have a high-profile case, we’ll catalogue that story and try to, in some way, even save the post or screenshot and print the post, and people that have commented on it, we try to cross reference that with our jury list to see if people have predisposed opinions that need to be set aside in the jury selection process,” the attorney explained.
Snelling was arrested on August 30 and charged with abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.
The arrest took place after authorities were dispatched to her home in Lexington, Kentucky, on August 27 after they received a call about an unresponsive infant. The “infant was located wrapped in a towel inside of a black trash bag,” according to an arrest citation.
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Snelling “admitted to giving birth” while speaking to the police, while she also said she concealed “the birth by cleaning any evidence, placing all cleaning items used inside of a black trash bag, including the infant, who was wrapped in a towel.”
The former college athlete pleaded not guilty to all charges during a September 2 court hearing, and she was released on $100,000 bond. Snelling is now living on “home incarceration with no ankle monitor” at her parents’ home in Tennessee, according to local outlet Lex 18.
She is next scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on September 26.
While there has been widespread public speculation about the case, not much has been revealed about the actual incident. However, the baby’s cause of death was listed as inconclusive, according to a coroner’s report obtained by Us Weekly on September 4.
