northernwalker | Question of the week- Sad topic involving children!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html?wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2009030602446 Requires free registration.

This article showed up in the Washington Post a couple of months ago. I've been thinking about it ever since. It's about about people who had lost children to hyperthermia- that is, the children had been left unattended in cars and had died from the heat. They discuss the prosecution of those parents, and whether it's justified.

I have to say no. It's an accident. A hideous, horrible accident. I say this as a person who takes medication to stay alive. I still leave the house in the morning having forgotten to use my inhaler. It's sitting right next to my bag in the middle of my bed, and I still miss it occasionally. These people are going on autopilot and just don't notice something sitting quietly in the back seat. They aren't drunk, or on drugs. They forgot. They will have to live with that for the rest of their lives. What can you possibly do to punish them more?

With Harrison, it was Ray Morrogh, the Fairfax commonwealth's attorney. In an interview a few days after he brought the charge of involuntary manslaughter, Morrogh explained why.

"There is a lot to be said for reaffirming people's obligations to protect their children," he said. "When you have children, you have responsibilities. I am very strong in the defense of children's safety."

Morrogh has two kids himself, ages 12 and 14. He was asked if he could imagine this ever having happened to him. The question seemed to take him aback. He went on to another subject, and then, 10 minutes later, made up his mind:

"I have to say no, it couldn't have happened to me. I am a watchful father."

This was telling, I think. It's said by the prosecutor who brought charges against one such parent.I don't think this can be as simple as he wants to make it. He wants to believe that he could never do it. That he would never make that mistake.

"Memory is a machine," he says, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."

This was said by an expert on human memory (who very nearly experienced this himself when he forgot his infant granddaughter was asleep in the back seat of the car. Luckily his wife was there and did remember her.)

So, what does everyone else think? Virtual kleenex is right here.

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This is a really tough one, but I think in this case I (mostly) agree with the status quo. Of course any sane parent would never do such a thing intentionally, and would suffer greatly just from the knowledge their child is dead, much less from the knowledge that their mistake was the cause of their child's death, but I believe strongly that every time a child dies and there is no known overarching medical cause, it should be investigated. To the vast majority of parents whose children die in this manner, this is one of the most horrible things that could happen to them, but there also seem to be an increasing number of severe cases of child neglect and abuse where the parents will strap a child into their car and leave them there as "punishment" or who are actually so negligent and uncaring as to not pay attention where their child is at any point, including if/when they are left in a vehicle. I think it would set a dangerous precedent to broadly excuse parents whose children die of hyperthermia as being "punished enough" if there is the potential that some parents really did commit criminal gross negligence or severe child abuse.

I think it's an unfortunate inevitability in the legal system that by having a right to a trial and being present at one's trial that some parents are made to sit through a thorough and disgusting revisiting of the evidence of their child's death, but I wonder if there are some ways to ease this particular burden without doing away with investigations altogether--the article said that due to some inconsistencies in interpretation of the law, about 40% of parents are never charged, whereas 60% are, and must sit at trial. If there were some way to better standardize the criteria for the preliminary investigation by the DA which determines whether it is worthwhile or necessary to criminally charge a parent, this might be avoidable in the majority of cases.

I think this is an awful situation all around, but I just don't know if removing the crime element altogether is really the right solution.

At least some of the cases being prosecuted are clearly cases of the DA being one of those people who "reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol."

Yeah, that's definitely wrong and bad in every way. People shouldn't be getting charged with things just because the DA misdirects his/her vitriol. I don't know enough about law to say what would be a reasonable way to control for this, but there's got to be something that can be done, right? Please?

My understanding is that charging/not charging is up to the DA and a standardization might help to protect people from cases of enraged DA's who want to believe they'd never make this mistake.

ITA that the case should be investigated, but unless it's part of a pattern of child abuse, I don't think it's worth it to prosecute.

It's a frightening thing to think that 60% of these parents are charged, especially when it's our safety practices that make this more of a risk.

"A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol."
I hate these people, these people who do the vitriol. I hate the prosecutors who prosecute this. I hate them.

And every day, when I drive my car to work, I find myself checking to make sure Benjamin is not in the car.

I think that they are profoundly scared. Scared that they could make that mistake, and so they're demonizing other people in the hopes that they can say, "Well, I'm not like that. I'm a good parent."

And every day, when I drive my car to work, I find myself checking to make sure Benjamin is not in the car.

*hugs*

I really wonder if there ought to be a merciful euthanasia law that would make it legal for people who have been responsible for the deaths of children to request the right to commit suicide. I'm not kidding...

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2004/08/24/peanut_allergy/

My wife and I were talking yesterday about how every now and then someone locks a baby in a car with the windows rolled up and the baby dies from the heat. If you were a father who did that, she said, how would you go on living with yourself? And I said, grimly, only half-joking, that you'd pretty much have to kill yourself.

Yeah, if it were me you'd be sticking me in a lockdown facility. For years.

Wow. I can tell you, right now, that I forget all kinds of things in my AM rush to the office. In the last year, there have been mornings when I've mismatched my shoes, left my ID card, & even forget my belt, although not all at the same time. I can easily imagine that I could forget if I dropped off a kid. The only cure is prevention-that is, I'd need a lot more sleep if I was a parent, although I understand that that's unlikely at best.

Yeah, let she who didn't get two blocks from her house this morning only to realize her hat was on her desk cast the first stone.

Question of the week- Sad topic involving children!

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