A woman here in Birmingham allegedly accidentally left her kid in the backseat while she went into a nail salon last summer. Kid baked in the car. No one had any reason to doubt that it was completely by accident but to me it ranked as gross negligence if that was the case.
She was not charged with any crime.
Maybe there was no evidence of
intentional neglect, unlike this case which reeks guilty. Shame she wasn't charged with something. Wonder how she got off? After all, you killed your kid.
I've done significant research on these types of cases*. Unfortunately, the criminal results from these cases widely varies from anywhere between no charges to, IIRC, 18 years in prison. Sadly, the only correlation I could see to loosely determine the outcome is the defendant's economic status. Nonetheless, this type of god awful scenario happens all across the socioeconomic spectrum - from welfare moms to college professors to sleep deprived young parents to an actual rocket scientist. Usually, these cases arise when a parent breaks a daily routine (i.e. one parent takes both kids instead of the normal one that he usually drops off at school).The incredible philosophical difficulty with these cases are that charging the defendant really doesn't accomplish any sort of traditional criminal law goal. For example, one of the main reasons we charge somebody with a crime is to
punish them for doing some "evil". Here, it's really difficult to say these people had an evil mind when they accidentally left their kid. Furthermore, how can child compare with the fact that these people have to live with the knowledge that they caused the death of their kid? Second, we criminally charge to prevent people from committing a crime again. With these parents, what are the practical odds of them ever making this mistake again?
I'm not advocating necessarily that we shouldn't explore criminal charges in these cases, but just noting that this isn't a scenario that corresponds with traditional notions of criminal behaviors. Here is a website that does a nice job of detailing more on the issue:
http://www.kidsandcars.org/heatstroke.html
*By these cases I'm referring to the unfortunately too common scenario where a parent unknowingly leaves a child in a car for an extended period of time and the child dies. I'm not talking about cases where the
parents were drunk or high, at a casino or engaged in some similar addictive behavior, or actually intended to harm their child.
Is neglecting a child to the point of death not considered an evil? Especially if you are the parent? Shouldn't every single case at the very least be charged with a minimum of the same crime? EG neglect?I just did not or could not accept the DA's reasoning not to charge this woman. It essentially boiled down to "this was obviously a horrible accident, one that did not carry any intent, and she has already been punished enough by the anguish of knowing she killed her child." Ok, but why not simply charge her with neglect? Isn't the crime of neglect exactly what that is meant for, where there is no intent but through lack of care a dependent is harmed?
Also, this woman went into a nail salon. She stayed in there for about an hour, someone saw the dead kid in the car and I believe called the police who then went in and informed the mother. She was an upper-middle class Asian lady.
How is that qualitatively different from being in a casino, really? In both cases the person is doing something besides caring for their child, who is utterly dependent on them for care. Why would it matter what the distraction is?
Also, because she was not drunk or high she should be cleared of neglect? Simply because she did not purposefully impair herself while in charge of a child?
Doesn't make much sense and the situation you describe sounds incredibly arbitrary. Do you feel that having widely divergent sentences for the same crime is appropriate?
1. The issue is defining neglect and shoehorning that into some element of mens rea. Generally, our criminal laws (this varies by state and the model penal code) require some sort of "wanton disregard" or "depraved indifference" at a minimum for an action to be a crime. Similarly, generally "neglect" denotes some course of continuing bad conduct. For example, most neglect type cases involve a parent who keeps a kid locked in a room for hours on end or doesn't properly feed a child for a week plus or something. In these cases, we have one singular instance of a conduct which, as you state is a "mistake" whereby there is no other evidence that this is common behavior for that particular parent. Granted, that mistake is probably the single worst mistake a person can make, but rarely does one very bad mistake constitute a pattern of neglect or fit into a criminal definition of recklessness or negligence. 2. I tried to limit my statement to a factual scenario where extraneous aggravating factors weren't present. I used the substance abuse/addiction or other addictions because they would suggest a person has a pattern of negative conduct. Essentially, I wanted to limit the "what about this case" type conversations that I thought my generalized comment would spark and head off any potentially distinguishable hypos.
3. Of course I would prefer similarly situated defendants get similar outcomes. I have no idea how you interpreted anything in my post to suggest otherwise. I was merely noting the incredibly difficulty that criminal justice professionals have had in dealing with these situations, and caveating that sentiment with my own conclusions that unfortunately the only consistent predictor is a person's financial status. My ultimate point though is that these cases are insanely difficult to deal with within the criminal justice system and opinions about what should happen vary wildly.
4. I have no idea how my generalized situation is arbitrary. It unfortunately happens a lot. One parent, undertaking some general daily action not driven my any outside negative influence, makes the awful but purely accidental mistake of leaving his or her child in the car. Period. You can poke and prod at it all you'd like, but this very simple scenario happens and is the factual "box" in which we are discussing what potential criminal liability, if any, there should be.
ETA:
5. No, what you suppose in your post is not what neglect is meant for. Neglect is meant to punish those who have developed some level of intent, even if minimal, to undertake action which carries a possibly of causing harm to their child. If we agree that these parents are truly making an unintended mistake, then it is not, by definition, neglect.
