Case Title: In re Child of Scott A.

Citation: 

Docket Number: 2019 ME 123

State: maine

Court: Maine Supreme Court

Date: 2019-07-30T00:00:00Z

Document:
MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2019 ME 123 
Docket: 
Yor-19-108 
Submitted 
On Briefs: July 18, 2019 
Decided: 
July 30, 2019 
 
Panel: 
SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, and HJELM, JJ. 
 
 
IN RE CHILD OF SCOTT A. 
 
 
HJELM, J. 
[¶1]  Scott A. appeals from a judgment of the District Court (Biddeford, 
Sutton, J.) terminating his parental rights to his child pursuant to 22 M.R.S. 
§ 4055(1)(B)(2)(a), (b)(i)-(ii), (iv) (2018).1  The father asserts that the 
judgment violates his right to due process because the court predicated factual 
findings that he was involved in illegal drug activity in part on his invocation at 
trial of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.  We affirm the 
judgment. 
                                         
1  In the same judgment, the court also terminated the mother’s parental rights.  Because she has 
not appealed, we discuss those aspects of the evidence and the procedural record that bear only on 
the father. 
 
2 
I.  BACKGROUND 
[¶2]  The following facts are drawn from the court’s findings, which are 
supported by competent record evidence, and from the procedural record.  See 
In re Child of Shayla S., 2019 ME 68, ¶ 2, 207 A.3d 1207. 
[¶3]  The Department of Health and Human Services first became 
involved with this family in 2004 due to various reports of abuse and neglect.  
In March of 2017, the older sibling of the child at issue here reported that the 
parents were both abusing drugs and selling drugs from the home.2  The sibling 
also stated that the child was not attending school and that his needs were not 
being met.   
[¶4]  During a departmental caseworker’s interview of the child, he 
reported being very fearful of both of his parents and of activities in the 
basement of the home.  He told the caseworker that he woke up “bawling” each 
morning, that many people went in and out of the home, that his mother drank 
                                         
2  The sibling was seventeen years old when she reported that information.  The sibling was also 
a subject of the child protection petition in this case but attained majority shortly after the 
termination petition was filed as to the child at issue here, and the Department did not seek to 
terminate the parents’ parental rights as to her.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4052(1) (2018) (stating that a 
termination petition may be filed as to a “child”); see also 22 M.R.S. § 4002(2) (2018) (defining a 
“child” as a person younger than 18 years old).  After the sibling became an adult, an extended care 
order was issued for her.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4037-A (2018).   
 
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a lot, and that his mother had told him that she wished that she and the child 
were dead. 
[¶5]  Three days after the Department received that information, police 
were dispatched to the home in response to the mother’s report of a domestic 
violence incident.  When the police arrived, the mother recanted her initial 
complaint but had visible bruising on her face, reported feeling suicidal, and 
stated that she had been drinking.  Shortly after, with the father’s consent, a 
safety plan was implemented, and the child began to live with his grandparents.  
The child was still living in his grandparents’ household when the termination 
order was issued nearly two years later.3   
[¶6]  Near the end of March of 2017, the Department filed a child 
protection petition.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4032 (2018).  In the petition, the 
Department alleged that the child was in jeopardy due to neglect, emotional 
abuse, and the threat of physical abuse due to the parents’ ongoing substance 
abuse, untreated mental health issues, and exposure to domestic violence.   
[¶7]  In July of 2017, the parents agreed to a jeopardy order and judicial 
review and permanency planning orders (Cantara, J.), which placed the child in 
                                         
3  The child has lived with his maternal grandparents since at least July of 2017, but the record is 
not entirely clear whether he initially came to live with them or with his paternal grandparents as 
part of the March 2017 safety plan. 
 
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departmental custody.4  The order required, among other things, that the father 
engage in substance-abuse and domestic-violence treatment and in other 
therapy to address his “emotional dysregulation.”  The order explicitly 
provided that the therapeutic provider was to be someone approved by the 
Department.  Despite that requirement and his long-standing addiction to a 
narcotic prescription medication, he subsequently refused to engage in 
substance abuse treatment except with a person who had not been approved 
by the Department.  After the jeopardy order was issued, the father twice tested 
positive for cocaine.   
[¶8]  The Department filed a petition for termination of parental rights in 
February of 2018.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4052 (2018).  Two months later, while driving 
his vehicle, the father was stopped by local police officers and Maine Drug 
Enforcement agents.  During the stop, one of the officers observed a container 
with what appeared to be packets of heroin in the vehicle.  The father was 
arrested and ultimately indicted in federal court for one count of possession of 
fentanyl and one count of possession of fentanyl with the intent to distribute 
                                         
4  Although the child began residing with his grandparents in March of 2017, the Department had 
not sought a preliminary protection order when it filed the child protection petition that month, see 
22 M.R.S. § 4034(1) (2018), and the record indicates that the child was not placed in departmental 
custody until the July permanency planning order was issued.   
 
5 
and conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846 (LEXIS 
through Pub. L. No. 116-29).  The father was later granted pretrial release to 
attend a month-long residential substance use treatment program.  Although 
he made progress during the program and came to acknowledge that he had 
been an addict for decades, sometime before mid-July of 2018 he was arrested 
for a violation of conditions of his supervised release.  At the time of the 
termination hearing, he remained in custody awaiting trial on the drug 
charges.5 
[¶9]  The court (Sutton, J.) held a two-day termination hearing in 
February of 2019.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4054 (2018).  One of the witnesses was the 
father.6  During his testimony, he asserted his privilege against 
self-incrimination in response to any question regarding the circumstances that 
led to the pending drug charges and some other drug-related activity.  In its 
judgment, the court drew an inference adverse to the father regarding the 
issues raised in those questions, see M.R. Evid. 513(b); In re Ryan M., 513 A.2d 
                                         
5  The court was presented with evidence that the arrest resulted from drug-related violations of 
the conditions of his pretrial release.   
6  For the first day of the hearing, even though the court had issued a transport order for him to 
attend in person, he was not brought to the courthouse, and the court made arrangements that 
allowed him to appear telephonically.  On the second day of the hearing, the father was present in 
court.   
 
6 
837, 841-42 (Me. 1986), and ultimately found that he had “committed and was 
involved in drug trafficking crimes that involved a large amount of fentanyl, and 
that at least some aspects of his drug distribution crimes took place at the 
family home, primarily in the basement.”   
[¶10]  In a judgment issued later in February of 2019, the court 
terminated the father’s parental rights to the child.  The court found, based on 
clear and convincing evidence, that the father was unwilling or unable to 
protect the child from jeopardy or to take responsibility for the child and that 
those circumstances were unlikely to change within a time reasonably 
calculated to meet the child’s needs, and that the father had failed to make a 
good faith effort to rehabilitate and reunify with the child.  See 22 M.R.S. 
§ 4055(1)(B)(2)(b)(i)-(ii), (iv).  The court also determined that termination of 
the father’s parental rights is in the best interest of the child.  See 22 M.R.S. 
§ 4055(1)(B)(2)(a).  The father filed a timely appeal from the judgment.  See 
22 M.R.S. § 4006 (2018); M.R. App. 2B(c)(1).   
II.  DISCUSSION 
[¶11]  The father contends that he “was denied a fair hearing” because he 
“was powerless to exercise his right to ‘respond to claims and 
evidence’ . . . without giving up his constitutional right to incriminate himself 
 
7 
[sic],” and that the court’s factual findings regarding his criminal involvement 
with drugs, based on his assertion of his privilege against self-incrimination, 
violated his right to due process.  As the father recognizes, the claim of error 
was not preserved, so we review the judgment for obvious error.  See In re Child 
of James R., 2018 ME 50, ¶ 16, 182 A.3d 1252 (“The father did not raise these 
issues below and thereby deprived the trial court of an opportunity to address 
any challenge of merit, and therefore he has not preserved a due process 
challenge for appellate review except, at most, for obvious error.”).   
[¶12]  “As applied to a termination hearing, balancing the interests, 
where significant rights are at stake, due process requires[] notice of the issues, 
an opportunity to be heard, the right to introduce evidence and present 
witnesses, the right to respond to claims and evidence, and an impartial 
factfinder.”  In re Adden B., 2016 ME 113, ¶ 7, 144 A.3d 1158 (quotation marks 
omitted).  Each of these elements of due process was satisfied here.  The father 
was provided with notice of the issues, and, in fact, his assertion to us that he 
“had no way of knowing that he might need to present witnesses as to his 
innocence of criminality” is belied by the motion he filed to continue the 
termination hearing on the ground that the pendency of the criminal case 
“could cause Fifth Amendment consequences” in this matter.  Additionally, the 
 
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father was represented by counsel and had a full opportunity to testify, to 
examine witnesses, and to respond to the evidence and the claims at issue at a 
hearing held before an impartial adjudicator.  The father’s assertion that he was 
denied a fair hearing is without merit.   
[¶13]  It is well-settled that in civil actions—including child protection 
proceedings—“the fact finder may draw an appropriate inference from a 
party’s claim of the privilege against [self-incrimination].”  M.R. Evid. 513(b); 
see also In re Ryan M., 513 A.2d at 841-42.  In those cases, “a party’s claim of the 
privilege against self-incrimination is a proper subject of comment by a judge 
or by counsel.”  M.R. Evid. 513(a).  The court did not commit error—much less 
obvious error—by drawing an adverse inference from the father’s invocation 
of his Fifth Amendment privilege. 
[¶14]  The court also committed no error by considering evidence of the 
father’s long history of substance use and his drug-related criminal conduct, 
established in part by the adverse inferences discussed above, as factors that 
contributed to the determination of parental unfitness.7  See In re Logan M., 
                                         
7  The father does not challenge the court’s determination that termination is in the child’s best 
interest.  In any event, on this record, such a challenge would have been unavailing.  See In re Children 
of Christopher S., 2019 ME 31, ¶ 7, 203 A.3d 808 (stating the standard of review applicable to a 
best-interest determination). 
 
9 
2017 ME 23, ¶ 3, 155 A.3d 430.  As the father acknowledges, the court “did not 
base its decision to terminate his parental rights solely on evidence of [the 
father]’s criminal drug involvement.”  And even beyond that, based on record 
evidence, the court made findings of the father’s intransigent drug addiction, 
his re-arrest and his expectation that he would be sentenced to a five-year 
prison term for the federal drug charges, his perpetration of domestic violence, 
and his inability to accept responsibility for his actions.8  Pointedly, the court 
drew on the father’s own testimony when he was asked how he planned to 
parent the child.  After initially responding simply that he was in jail, he told the 
court, “I don’t know how to even answer that.”   
[¶15]  On this record, the court was entitled to conclude—as it did—that 
the father was parentally unfit within the meaning of at least one statutory 
definition of that legal standard.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(b)(i)-(ii), (iv); 
In re Arturo G., 2017 ME 228, ¶ 11, 175 A.3d 91; In re K.M., 2015 ME 79, ¶ 9, 118 
A.3d 812 (“Where the court finds multiple bases for unfitness, we will affirm if 
                                         
8  Appropriately, the court made clear that its determination of parental unfitness was not 
predicated solely on the father’s incarceration and the prospect of years-long incarceration.  Rather, 
the court considered that circumstance as a factor, combined with others, that led to a more 
comprehensively-based conclusion that the father is parentally unfit within the meaning of section 
4055(1)(B)(2)(b).  See In re Cody T., 2009 ME 95, ¶ 28, 979 A.2d 81 (“In considering the parental 
fitness of an incarcerated parent, the court’s focus is not on the usual parental responsibility for 
physical care and support of a child, but upon the parent’s responsibility or capacity to provide a 
nurturing parental relationship using the means available.” (quotation marks omitted)). 
 
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any one of the alternative bases is supported by clear and convincing evidence.” 
(quotation marks omitted)).  
The entry is: 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Seth Berner, Esq., Portland, for appellant father 
 
Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Hunter C. Umphrey, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office 
of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee Department of Health and Human 
Services 
 
 
Springvale District Court docket number PC-2017-11 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY