Prosecutors drop ‘unlawful camping’ charge against Louisville woman cited while in labor
Prosecutors have dropped an “unlawful camping” charge against a woman who was controversially cited by Louisville police last September while she was homeless, pregnant and in labor under an Interstate 65 overpass.
Public defenders for 34-year-old Samantha Crabtree on Jan. 17 filed a motion to dismiss the citation against her in Jefferson District Court.
In the motion, Crabtree’s attorneys said the portion of the Safer Kentucky Act that essentially bans homeless people from resting in many public or private places violates the constitutions of the United States and Kentucky.
Kentucky’s legislature included unlawful camping in the sweeping anti-crime law it passed a year ago.
The Jefferson County Attorney’s Office, evaluating the case on its individual merits, decided to ask the judge to dismiss the charge at a hearing on Wednesday, said Erin White, director of the office’s criminal division.
“We believe that this was the just result,” White said in a phone interview after the hearing.
Crabtree faced a fine of up to $250 fine if convicted, with jail time a possibility for further convictions.
There were nearly three dozen cases on the district court’s newly established unlawful camping docket on Wednesday, although only a handful of the defendants appeared, White said.
None of the cases resulted in conviction on Wednesday, she said. In fact, the goal of the new docket is to link defendants to social services, including housing, and steer cases toward a dismissal, not a punishment, she said.
Crabtree and her husband lived in an RV until the city of Louisville impounded it, her attorneys wrote in the motion to dismiss.
She tried to explain that to Louisville Metro Police Lt. Caleb Stewart when he approached her at a downtown intersection under an Interstate 65 overpass last September. That’s where she was resting on a mattress to ease her early labor pains, the attorneys wrote.
Crabtree’s husband had left to call for an ambulance, her attorneys wrote.
Stewart didn’t believe that Crabtree was preparing to give birth, according to comments he made on his body camera footage of the encounter, her attorneys wrote.
Stewart claimed on the video that Crabtree “pulled this kind of stuff before,” and that when she got caught “breaking some kind of law,” she would “make up an outlandish story,” her attorneys wrote.
In an interview with WAVE 3 in Louisville, Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey said in January that “knowing what we know now, I think everybody, including Lt. Stewart, would have done that differently.”
This story was originally published January 30, 2025 at 10:27 AM.
