Text 21751, 148 rader
Skriven 2006-08-09 12:54:56 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Alan Hess
Ärende: cocaine baby cases reversed
===================================
Doesn't matter if they clean up or not.  They have demonstrated an inability to
what is right not only under the law, but morally as well, by putting that
child in danger.  To give the kid back to them is nothing short of criminal on
the part of government.


Alan Hess -> all wrote:
 AH> The point made by the judges seems valid.  If women who use drugs while
 AH> pregnant (stupid as that is) can be prosecuted and punished for the
 AH> damage that inflicts on their babies, and not just for their drug use,
 AH> any woman who gives birth to a baby that isn't perfectly healthy could
 AH> conceivably face charges for consuming unhealthy things or performing
 AH> activities deemed possibly hazardous to her developing fetus while
 AH> pregnant.  Who would decide which activities or consumptions should be
 AH> denied pregnant women, and which are acceptable?  It's a difficult issue
 AH> - I expect some different positions in responses.

 AH> This doesn't mean women like these shouldn't be punished for their
 AH> illegal activities (as they were), and their babies should be taken away
 AH> from these irresponsible mothers until the mothers clean up and get out
 AH> of jail (if they get jail time), and, if they don't clean up, the babies
 AH> should be put up for adoption.
 AH> ********************


 AH>
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.court04aug04,0,347300.story?c
 AH> oll=bal-pe-asection

 AH>  From the Baltimore Sun
 AH> Cocaine baby cases reversed
 AH> Md. high court rejects reckless endangerment convictions for drug use by
 AH> pregnant women


 AH> By Stephanie Desmon
 AH> Sun staff

 AH> August 4, 2006

 AH> Maryland's highest court yesterday threw out the convictions of two
 AH> Eastern Shore women who were sent to prison after their babies were born
 AH> with cocaine in their systems, likening the prosecutions to going after
 AH> mothers who smoked, failed to exercise or even went horseback riding
 AH> while pregnant.

 AH> While social workers regularly get involved when newborns test positive
 AH> for drugs, Talbot County appears to be the only place in Maryland - and
 AH> just one of a few in the nation - where police and prosecutors were
 AH> putting mothers in prison for it.

 AH> Within hours of the court's opinion yesterday, Talbot County State's
 AH> Attorney Scott G. Patterson said in a statement that his office
 AH> disagreed with the decision but would cease the practice of charging
 AH> such mothers with reckless endangerment.

 AH> "The court said quite clearly and forcefully that was improper, illegal
 AH> and can't be done," said David Rocah, an attorney with the American
 AH> Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which represented one of the women.
 AH> "The long and short of it is, the prosecutor was trying to twist a
 AH> statute that was never intended to cover this condition and the court
 AH> said, 'No, you can't do that.'"

 AH> In its unanimous ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals noted that
 AH> although a pregnant woman may be prosecuted for drug possession, the
 AH> legislature has consistently rejected efforts to impose additional
 AH> criminal penalties for the effect her drug use might have on the child.
 AH> The court agreed with the argument of ACLU attorneys that such a tactic
 AH> could deter women from seeking prenatal care.

 AH> The General Assembly "obviously gave credence to the evidence presented
 AH> to it that criminalizing the ingestion of controlled substances - in
 AH> effect criminalizing drug addiction for this one segment of the
 AH> population, pregnant women - was not the proper approach to the problem
 AH> and had, in fact, proved ineffective in other States in deterring either
 AH> the conduct or addiction generally on the part of pregnant women," the
 AH> judges wrote.

 AH> Jill Morrison, an attorney with the National Women's Law Center, which
 AH> wrote a brief in the case on the side of the two mothers, said that
 AH> while few people condone drug use by pregnant women, prosecutions of
 AH> this type could keep drug-addicted women from seeking proper medical
 AH> care. Such care can mitigate the potentially harmful effect drugs have
 AH> on a baby, she said.

 AH> "You're driving women deeper underground, women who are sick
 AH> essentially," she said.

 AH> Other states made similar attempts to criminalize drug use by pregnant
 AH> women during the crack scare of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But in
 AH> dozens of cases, courts struck down criminal convictions as
 AH> unconstitutional or beyond lawmakers' intent. An exception remains South
 AH> Carolina.

 AH> Both Talbot County women - Regina Kilmon and Kelly Lynn Cruz - were
 AH> charged with reckless endangerment after the birth of their sons. Cruz
 AH> was convicted a year ago and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. She is
 AH> out on parole, Rocah said. Kilmon pleaded guilty to the charge in
 AH> January 2005 and was sentenced to four years in prison before filing an
 AH> appeal. Neither woman could be reached for comment yesterday. Four other
 AH> women have also been charged over the past several years in Talbot
 AH> County, the ACLU said.

 AH> "This serves as a rebuke to those activist prosecutors who seek to use
 AH> the criminal law to advance their own political agendas," Rocah said.

 AH> Talbot County attorneys had argued that they were just trying to protect
 AH> children. "While the office of the state's attorney for Talbot County
 AH> does not agree with the whole of the opinion of the Court of Appeals in
 AH> the Kilmon and Cruz cases, we understand the court's reasoning and fully
 AH> accept its decision as a definitive statement of the law of Maryland on
 AH> the issues generated by these cases," Patterson said.

 AH> Kilmon's case came to the attention of prosecutors soon after the birth
 AH> of her son on June 3, 2004. The baby tested positive for cocaine through
 AH> a drug screening at Easton Memorial Hospital, where he was born. On Jan.
 AH> 13, 2005, Cruz gave birth to her son. She was 29 weeks pregnant, and
 AH> toxicology tests showed the baby had cocaine in his system - as did she.

 AH> Rocah said the court's opinion clearly shows it has no interest in
 AH> "regulating pregnancy via the criminal law."

 AH> The ruling speculates that widening the scope of behavior governed by
 AH> reckless endangerment statutes could make pregnant women vulnerable to
 AH> criminal liability for a wide range of activities, depending on "how
 AH> aggressive, inventive and persuasive any particular prosecutor might be."

 AH> The statute could be stretched, the judges wrote, to include "a whole
 AH> host of intentional and conceivably reckless activity that could not
 AH> possibly have been within the contemplation of the legislature -
 AH> everything from becoming (or remaining) pregnant with the knowledge that
 AH> the child likely will have a genetic disorder that may cause serious
 AH> disability or death ... to failing to wear a seat belt while driving ...
 AH> to exercising too much or too little.

 AH> "Such ordinary things as skiing or horseback riding could produce
 AH> criminal liability."

 AH> stephanie.desmon@baltsun.com

 AH> Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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