Mom who admitted smothering two-month-old baby girl to death while high on meth WALKS FREE as judge says ‘you’re not innocent, but you’re not guilty’ after prosecutors failed to prove intent to kill

An Indianapolis mother has been found not guilty of negligently suffocating her child, with a judge shockingly saying he would have found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter or reckless homicide.

Dacia Lacey, 32, walked free after a judge ruled prosecutors filed improper charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in death, saying they failed to prove she intentionally killed her two-month-old daughter Alona .

The mother admitted to police that she smothered the child with couch cushions while high on methamphetamine so she could “get some sleep” in August 2022.

She cried in court this week as Judge Mark Stoner said he was “reluctantly” releasing her, insisting she was “not innocent” but also “not guilty of what the state has accused you of.”

The case was a bench trial, meaning it was decided by only one judge rather than a jury.

When initially questioned about her daughter’s death, Lacey told officers it was a freak accident caused by her children playing with the baby on a couch.

However, five months later she admitted to suffocating her child with couch cushions because she would not stop crying when questioned again.

During her trial, the court heard a recording of the 911 call she made after her death, during which she screamed and cried to a dispatcher.

‘Oh my God! Oh my God! My baby is dead! My newborn baby is dead!’ she said in the recording.

By the time emergency services arrived at her home, the child was already dead, reports said WHT. A toxicology report showed the mother had meth in her system at the time.

An autopsy could not rule on the cause of death and could not determine whether it was caused by homicide or trauma.

A video was also played in court showing Lacey showing investigators with a baby doll how she put the baby in a swing with a bottle before going to sleep.

However, her claims at the time – before she confessed – were refuted by testimony from her five-year-old daughter, who recalled witnessing the death of her newborn sister.

She testified, “My mother was angry, hit the baby with a pillow and put the pillow on her face.”

But Judge Stoner later said the child’s testimony could not be relied on in court because she is “only capable of hearing emotions and repeating some things without understanding things.”

The court also heard testimony from Lacey’s father’s fiancée, who cared for the little girl after the two-month-old child’s death.

She recalled the five-year-old telling her the same story, testifying, “She said my mother got really angry with her because she wouldn’t stop crying.”

“And she held a pillow to her face and hit her with it. And I’m like, ‘What? What did you just say?’

Armstrong filmed the child telling her the story, which led to criminal charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in death.

However, Stoner said the court was never presented with any physical evidence showing a dependent had been neglected, such as broken bones or signs of abuse.

Jamie Davis, a child abuse detective with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, testified about the mother’s confession, which she said came after the mother told different versions of how her baby died.

When she confessed, Davis said Lacey “sat on my lap and cried on my shoulder, saying that she did her baby wrong and that she smothered her baby.”

“Basically she said she was high, she was tired, and Alona had been crying. Finally she picked Alona up and looked at her at the crease in the couch. So if you have the back of the couch and then the seating area, she positioned her face towards the crease,” she said.

Ultimately, Judge Stoner ruled that prosecutors filed improper charges because they could not prove that Lacey intentionally killed her daughter.

“You are not innocent, but you are not guilty of what the state has accused you of,” he said at the end of the trial.

“This is a case that happens when you’re a bad parent. There are things you can never do. You can never have exclusive possession of your children and go out and do drugs.”

While he said he “reluctantly” released her, Stoner emphasized that under the law, “not everything that is a mistake or everything that is wrong is criminal.”

“Something has to be done with criminal intent, criminal responsibility, and that is what the suspect is accused of,” he said.

“If the state chooses to charge someone, he must prove that he did something with criminal intent. Bad parenting is by definition not criminal.”

Stoner placed the blame for the mother’s walk at large on the state, concluding, “It is important to understand that the prosecutor chooses the charge. It is the prosecutor who is chosen. The prosecutor has a screening department that makes decisions about what to charge.”

The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office reportedly issued a brief statement to WTHR, saying the department “has no additional comment at this time.”