Another child car death has focused attention on a phenomenon which has produced painful challenges for prosecutors around the country.
The wide variation in prosecutors’ decisions on whether to file charges highlights the complex and fraught nature of the decisions confronting prosecutors who must decide whether to indict grieving parents who said they simply had forgotten that they had left a young child in a hot car, a phenomenon that claims about three dozen lives a year nationally, the New York Times reports.
The decisions are influenced by many factors: a desire among some prosecutors to extend mercy to parents they believe made a tragic mistake, scientific questions about faulty memory and legal considerations about whether the state can prove the parent is guilty of a crime.
Some parents who forget their children in cars face no charges, others are charged with felonies like involuntary manslaughter and still others are charged with misdemeanors, like child endangerment.
“All in all, there is no rhyme or reason to how these cases are treated,” said Amber Rollins of KidsandCars.org, an organization that has analyzed 833 pediatric deaths caused by heatstroke in hot cars since the mid-1990s.
In a recent Bronx, N.Y., case in which twins died, father Juan Rodriguez told police he was convinced he had dropped the children off safely at their day care after he had left his older son at another child-care provider.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark charged Rodriguez with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Rollins’ organization identified 494 deaths involving caregivers who said they were not aware they had left children in hot cars. In 43 percent of cases, no charges were filed.
In 32 percent of the cases, the caregiver was charged and convicted. In 11 percent of the cases, the person was charged with a crime, but the judge or jury did not convict.
See also “Memory’s Surprising Role in Child Death Trials,” The Crime Report.