Oregon Supreme Court 08-19-10

by: Abassos • August 18, 2010 • no comments

Read the full article for details about the following new cases:

• Criminal Mistreatment - Messy House Cases Overturned

The Supreme Court has restored sanity to the prosecution of Criminal Mistreatment I:

a defendant withholds physical care from a dependent person when the defendant keeps back from the dependent person those physical services and attention that are necessary to provide for the dependent person's bodily needs.

This does not include protecting the child from every conceivable environmental danger. The cases being reversed today became colloquially known as the "messy house cases" because the State obtained convictions based on messy houses combined with, for example fire hazards or accessible, small objects that a small child could choke on. Taken at face value the State's argument would have made criminals out of most parents in the State. Fortunately, the State's argument gets slapped down based on legislative history, basic logic and, most importantly, a clear reading of the statute:

The state's interpretation is difficult to square with the statutes' texts in three respects. First, it converts the verb "withhold" into "create" or "fail to correct." Second, it converts a prohibition against withholding specific services (food, physical care, and medical attention) into a prohibition against creating any and all risks to a dependent person's health. Third, it converts a statute that prohibits a present deprivation of services or attention into one that prohibits creating a risk of future harm. To be sure, presently withholding necessary and adequate physical care can impair a child's health and safety. But it does not follow that every risk of future harm to a child's health or safety that a parent either creates or fails to correct constitutes withholding physical care. The former set of risks is far broader than the latter, but the statutory prohibition extends only to the latter set (or subset) of risks.

State v. Baker-Krofft, State v. McCants/Walker