MADISON, Neb. (CN) — The mother of a Nebraska teen who had a late-term medication abortion last year pleaded guilty late Friday morning to three charges related to the abortion and its grisly aftermath.
Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty to concealing or abandoning a dead body, false reporting, and performing an abortion beyond 20 weeks. Prosecutors, who say the body of the fetus was found burned and buried in a field, dropped two additional charges: concealing the death of another person and abortion by an unlicensed doctor.
Madison County Attorney Joseph Smith outlined the case against the 42-year-old at Friday's hearing: After learning about the pregnancy, Burgess and her daughter tried to figure out a way to abort the fetus or cause a stillbirth. Burgess ordered a drug online called “Pregnot,” which Smith described as part of a class of “drugs that are used to abort babies by doctors when it’s appropriate," emphasizing that was not the case here, and that the medication is used much earlier in a pregnancy by doctors performing legitimate abortions.
"The defendant is not a doctor, has no medical training, is not authorized to perform any medical procedures," Smith said, "and never was.”
Court documents filed by prosecutors indicate Burgess' daughter was just over 23 weeks pregnant during a doctor’s visit on March 8, 2022, and had a due date of July 3. Sometime prior to the week of April 29 of that year, the fetus was delivered or miscarried, according to the documents, putting the timing at roughly the 29th week of pregnancy.
The fetus was probably born dead. Smith argued that it was a "human baby" at that point.
“The baby at that point would have been between 29 and 31 weeks,” Smith said, referring to the fetus and the length of the pregnancy. “The child was viable.”
Mother and daughter tried to hide the fetus, at one point there was an attempt, “to burn the baby with, I think, apple-flavored charcoal briquettes.” Smith said. The fetus was buried, moved and reburied.
Authorities arrested the Burgesses, both residents of the city of Norfolk in northeast Nebraska, in June 2022 after investigators uncovered Facebook messages indicating the two discussed using medication to end the pregnancy.
After Smith was done speaking, District Court Judge Mark Johnson asked Burgess, “is that what happened, ma’am?”
"Yes," Burgess replied quietly, joined by her attorney and clad in black slacks, black shoes and a black short-sleeved shirt.
Johnson asked her to speak up.
“Yes,” Burgess said again, slightly louder.
After accepting Burgess' guilty plea Johnson honored her attorney's request to have her undergo a psychological exam as part of the pre-sentencing investigation. Smith did not object.
Burgess' daughter Celeste, now 19, pleaded guilty six weeks ago to a felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body and prosecutors dropped two misdemeanors. She is set to be sentenced on July 20.
Jessica Burgess quickly left the building following the hearing with her attorney Bradley Ewalt, also of Norfolk, who declined to comment.
The first and third charges Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty to are Class 4 felonies, Nebraska’s least serious, and can lead to a maximum of two years in prison. There is no minimum sentence. False reporting is a misdemeanor. Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 22.
The incidents took place before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but one expert told Courthouse News that Nebraska law at the time banning abortion at 20 weeks could be allowed under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in the United States.
Earlier this year, the unicameral Nebraska Legislature banned abortion at 12 weeks. Republican Governor Jim Pillen signed the bill in May.
The Burgess case gained national attention in the wake of the Dobbs decision, and because prosecutors gained the defendants' social media messages via warrant, but on Friday only a handful of Nebraska-based reporters were in the courtroom for the plea.
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