after him i good afternoon first of all i want to thank you for your supplemental briefs and we've asked a lot of you in this case it's obviously a very difficult case to meet with very well done causation but that position would allow probabilities to extend to be on the direct result of the defendant's actions into unforeseeable results would assure all have died in a fire that was caused by gross negligence of someone's negligence on after falling asleep in bed with a later his condition has stabilized he was no longer an seizure medication there were consistent medical requirements for his care including using braces when he slept to prevent him from rolling over death you know failure to comply with known safety requirements babies that don't have the ability to move over with pillows in the crib knowing you know that he couldn't extricate himself if he did roll over she put a pillow there and they're not checking him for so long these are all on forseeable  those are some of those i do want to stare a little bit misleading what was stated in the briefs about what those holdings were now the very premise of defense argument is one that the purpose of the he wore at night and sometimes during the day work entirely or puke to improve his the mobility of his muscles he has severe muscles fast to city which means his mother will continually contract and he had very limited use and control of his arms and his legs now his mom didn't know the terminology she testified that she was told the braces were too strict now charles arms to keep his arms straight away from his mouth now d in defendant's brief she said two passages and one of them was simply remember lee testified that draco had to sleep in his braces and the other one was the one we just talked about that she had never seen him roll over when he had braces for her actions if the issue isn't whether there was a contributing intervening cause there what's the issue is whether that intervening cause qualifies as a superseding pause which relieves defendant of culpability and the because it is considered foreseeable in illinois so the issue about whether mom's actions amounted to merely improper or unskilled care are whether they're ordinary negligence or whether they rose to the level of gross negligence that's you know where you could you would still see come off liability you know where we were in so much of the level of the the level of her knowledge is extremely important because when we're talking about duty of care we're talking about she she is she knew or she didn't know and i don't believe there is any reason that she was forced to she certainly wasn't told by a doctor that the braces meant he could roll over and she certainly wasn't told by a doctor that the clip i think about anything about body right but even the doctor conceded that he really couldn't say how this young man built and developed in the position he was ok but the back of it what we're looking at is examiner found out a mark on his body no bed sores the diaper was clean no nick lacks perfectly clothes she was using the leg braces correctly she ripped over the years with the doctors for his with the rehab and the doctors for his medical care she was a loving devoted mom so my point is that if she did fail to put on those races that one single night that there was a mistake or improper care it did not rise to the level  what the purpose of braces were they had nothing to do with rolling over and preventing some kind of danger in the mt absolutely none of that and the knowledge is very important now the case of people versus sullivan in illinois is a little bit evidence in your opinion shows that the the death was not caused by intervening events on relate to the defense x is that which your position i position is the data that there can be to  of of his culpability for putting geraldo in a position where he could extricate himself and have the burden time there is no question right well sometimes something to somebody knows are supreme cause and so there is a presumption that if you're the contributing cause you're also the proximate cause but when it's rabies doesn't seem to happen i don't think i've ever had a case where it was raised until now but when it is group well the bottom line is this what we're looking at here is whether this is right or mary had visions or gross negligence so whether we're proving it they're just proving it the bottom line rather later in life in terms of how his positions are better whatever i believe it was pretty deposition by defend his actions so he basically was standing on that idea that the mother put this pillow next to the bed which was like an instrument the of suffocation i mean if if you rolled over scooted into the pillow he's going to suffocate because he can't do anything i don't mean isn't death of reasonable inference that there's this enormous pillow next to the bed and it's like it is it's one of these folk kind of things where once you're in it you're in it and so it's like isn't there an inference there that this was gross negligence to have a pillow next to the bed where this child can't do anything really to extricate himself i think that the mother and make maybe some people might be aware of that risk but i don't think this mother was aware of that was not really we don't look at what so that he would move on she didn't do that she just thought a wild look pillow instead if this were a baby in the room and you stuck one of these enormous elbows in the room you know there's a real chance there are some patient because babies don't have that ousted cases that defendant cited where it where is the worker mary negligence for civil liability which is different than what's going on here but this was a case where an elderly patient who also couldn't move was believe that the intervening cause was absolutely related he wouldn't be able to not have cicada him self if it wasn't for defendant x i mean and that's why it says the doctors and family don't owe a duty to defend and to treat the victim as to mitigate the defendant's criminal liability nursing home he you just can't prevent anything but if you're going to do i didn't see this kid and put him in a position where he can't move or he can't do this you can't expect his mother to foresee every single possibility to prevent everything she was doing house and left the child unattended for seventy two hours no fault of her role and that child died from starvation or so i'd reach for something we say there was no intervening super in cars here because the mother in doing wrong i don't think we would struggling to understand why was it what the mother it is important what the mother if she did commit gross negligence it is important that is the standard that has to be gross negligence to break the chain and well i don't believe she committed gross negligence here and in all of those i will state he says they actually show that in those cases but the mothers of the peers in those cases they actually did something more and this mother made a mistake a ordinary mother jones and simply the law and illinois ordinarily ordinary negligence is not enough i mean i just i do i just would like to point out that some of that if i go through a couple of those and he says maybe this can fact were made in that case where that mom was under the influence of heavy drugs been doing drugs for a couple days hadn't slept the dad knew about it and they still put the baby to co sleep is a mound of baby suffocated and their court found that there was there any really any medical testimony by any doctor to explain what his real condition was at this point in his life and that you know he was either not able to move or he was able to scoot already i mean she she wasn't a doctor for the limited movements he was able to grasp a toy but he also interesting the sad are you i get all of my information about to rouse developments from our reporting from our next mom is the one who's seeking care of him so she's the one who says oh now he can do this or now he can't do that you know so that's that is that's the only data to answer is medical information from the mom well if she gets that information and where she's the boy's able to do from the mo doing completely wrong but nonetheless it was it again i think everyone was just going by the circumstantial nature of the of the situation and position it was found them so again i want i do want to get back to on an adult that with a bunch of pillows around it and this was in violation of the licensing regulations of the daycare provider and there was evidence on the record that the sticker was explicitly warned of the dangers of doing that so in that case there was  behavior found so conscious disregard however at the same time that the court affirmed that conviction the court also said a reasonable jury could have also found the acts not reckless in putting the barrier of pillows around the victim but because it helps if you the absence in the light most favorable to the state from the conviction so there is it is not a foregone conclusion that this was a horrible thing that man she absolutely was she certainly didn't know whether she should have she did know it it doesn't seem based on her testimony and based on all the facts you know about her that she would have intentionally done something like that so my inference from the record is that she did not and did not think anybody is is not the issue the issue is the issue is what it is her because it is whether she committed gross negligence that is the issue what she did her actions in her knowledge are part of the goes into that calculation so that actually is the issue ok what she did and again these other cases there are so many differences in them and the state versus weber the parents gave their sixteen month old  could ok but i want to make a point particular about that case because those parents were they were found to be gross negligence the equivalent of reckless behavior those parents were actually in the same position as defendant in this case where their ac from extricating so right mother is not on trial here so these cases that which she's trying to show shows that a man that had course negligence in skis and that is what needs to be found in order to say the chain is broken cases where is the we have with this one case where a woman decided she didn't want a life support and took herself off life support i mean these are decisions that are considered foreseeable so somewhat the stay up with me idea that there were a lot of possibilities that he could die at night so he could have died as well it was only yesterday he did this when his you know there wasn't  intervening event on related to the defendant six isn't that standard unrelated to the dependency unrelated to the defendant's acts and in the says of the the putting of any unsafe sleeping environment the  the course dismissive comment you know i don't know what that is it does show that the court didn't know why i didn't look up the law and it's not in the courts it's certainly not a common law it's rare it's not something that the judge necessarily would be expected to know off the cuff you know this is not an easy area a lot of research as we know but the comments of the corporation as he did look it up but he didn't know it and mr nelson always had a right to have the state's burden of