Inmate Avoids Execution by Paying to Get Pregnant

Four prison guards in northern Vietnam have been suspended for alleged negligence after a female inmate on death row for drug trafficking became pregnant, which means her death sentence will be commuted to life in prison once her child is born, the AP reports. The Thanh Nien newspaper says Nguyen Thi Hue, 42, was arrested in 2012 for drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2014. A court rejected her appeal the same year. The paper reported that while in prison Hue paid $2,300 to a male inmate to help her get pregnant.

It said the 27 year-old male inmate twice put his sperm in a plastic bag with a syringe in a mutually agreed place and Hue inseminated herself. She became pregnant and is expected to give birth in about two months. Under Vietnamese law, Hue will have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment for having a child under 3 years of age. A similar incident happened in 2007 when two prison guards in the northern province of Hoa Binh were sentenced to up to five years in prison for abuse of power after allowing a female inmate to get pregnant with a male inmate. (More Vietnam stories.)