A female prisoner in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh escaped the death penalty by getting herself pregnant from sperm which she says was given to her by a male convict in the imprisonment facility.

Nguyen Thi Hue, a 42-year-old from the northern province of Lang Son, who was sentenced to death in June 2014 for drug trafficking, contacted a few male prisoners to request their sperm with the promise of payment if she got pregnant, a police official in Quang Ninh told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday.

According to the official information of Quang Ninh police, officers in the provincial prison discovered on January 6 that Hue had been attempting to conceive for about four to five months.

Local investigators were then ordered to cooperate with the People’s Procuracy of Quang Ninh to probe the case.

Hue admitted that she had asked male inmates serving their sentences in the same prison facility to give her their sperm under the condition that she pay VND50 million (US$2,233) if she became pregnant.

Through initial investigation, police identified Nguyen Tuan Hung, 27, who is serving his 30 months in jail for theft, as one of the sperm donors.

Hung gave his sperm to Hue twice in August 2015 by putting it in a plastic bag along with a syringe and placing it in a secret pre-arranged location.

The female convict said that she collected the bags of sperm in the morning when prisoners are typically scheduled to be released from their cells for personal hygiene.

In order to inseminate herself she used the syringe to inject the semen directly into her uterus, according to Hue’s statement.

The incident occurred as a result of Hue’s exploitation of the shortcomings in the province’s prison facility, said a deputy police chief in Quang Ninh.

About 80 prisoners, twelve of whom are women, await their executions in the provincial prison.

Though they are supposed to be detained in solitary confinement, due to an insufficient number of solitary cells some of the prisoners, including Hue, are kept in general areas where convicts of different sentences live, prison officials explained.

These areas allow more contact with other inmates, giving Hue the ability to secretly communicate through signs and symbols with male prisoners, the deputy chief of police continued, adding that there are not many security cameras there.

Several public opinions have pointed to the possibility that Hue’s plan succeeded with the help of some prison officers. However, local authorities have not yet issued any decision to punish any officers that may have been involved, according to Colonel Le Manh Thang, an official at the Quang Ninh Department of Police.

“Police are investigating and cannot decide at the moment whether Hue received assistance from correction officers,” Col. Thang said.

DNA tests will also be conducted to indentify the father of the child before any punishment is imposed on Hue and the sperm donor in accordance with the law, he added.

Under Article 35 of the Penal Code, capital punishment shall not be applied to offenders who are pregnant or have children within 36 months of age, and shall be replaced with life imprisonment, said Pham Tan Thuan from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association.

Conception by the direct injection of sperm into a woman’s uterus is very rare, Le Thi Phuong, an obstetrician in Quang Ninh, said, adding that the semen has to be kept in a favorable environment at certain temperature.

Even when all of the conditions are met, the success rate of such a method is only 20 percent, the doctor elaborated.

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