After seven years in jail for refusing to disclose her son's whereabouts, Jacqueline Bouknight walked free and revealed nothing more than a smile.
Her attorneys call her a hero of civil disobedience. The judge who held her in contempt fears the child may be dead. And the advocate for the boy, who would be 9, pleaded with the 29-year-old mother to start talking."Jackie, it's a tragedy you have let this go on so long," court-appointed lawyer Mitchell Mirviss said during a hearing Tuesday in which a judge allowed her release.
Known in court records only as "Maurice M," the boy was barely 6 months old when he was taken from his mother and placed in temporary foster care after doctors found fractures on his right arm and shoulder. He also wore a body cast to heal a broken leg.
When Bouknight won her son back several months later by taking parenting classes, the baby disappeared, and Bouknight ended up in the Baltimore City Detention Center for refusing to say where he had been taken.
Her attorneys argued that Bouknight was just trying to protect her son from the physical abuse she experienced in foster care when she was a child.
One of Bouknight's attorneys, Cristina Gutierrez, said the mother promises to find her son and fight a court order that prohibits her from contacting him. She noted her client has "no family, no life, no money."
The boy's father was killed in a 1988 drug-related shooting.
Over the years, Bouknight volunteered several leads to investigators, but none led to the boy. They were always followed by her defiant silence.
Assistant Attorney General Ralph S. Tyler III said Bouknight's steadfast refusal to talk is still criminal, but he said he could no longer argue that keeping her behind bars would help find the child.
Tyler and the child's advocate Mirviss said they believe the child is alive and that Bouknight had told all she would tell.