Court Opinion

ID: 9590522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:55:46.930037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:06.114995
License: Public Domain

*697WARREN, J.
Defendant appeals from convictions on two counts of child neglect under ORS 163.545. She claims the trial court erred in refusing to exclude certain evidence and in denying her motion for judgment of acquittal. We reverse the convictions, because we find no substantial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the state, to support the verdict.
On October 31, 1981, defendant was living in a small house with her two children, ages eight years old and 22 months old. At approximately 9:30 p.m., defendant left her home with two other adult residents of the house to attend a Halloween party at a local tavern, some three minutes away by automobile. Having failed to locate child care earlier in the day, defendant left the children unsupervised, with the older child watching television and the younger child asleep. Defendant left the older child with telephone numbers of the tavern and a friend’s residence directly across the street from defendant’s residence. There was testimony at trial that the older child was proficient in the use of the phone and could ask for help from neighbors if required. Between 10:45 p.m. and 11 p.m. that evening, two adult friends of defendant’s drove from the tavern to defendant’s home to pick up a camera and check on the children. They found the younger child asleep in her room and the older child watching television. When defendant returned home at approximately 2 a.m. on November 1, 1981, she found the house filled with heavy black smoke. Attempts to rescue the children failed, and both died. No evidence exists in the record as to the cause of the fire.
Defendant was subsequently convicted of child neglect under ORS 163.545, which provides, in relevant part:
“(1) A person having custody or control of a child under 10 years of age commits the crime of child neglect if, with criminal negligence, he leaves the child unattended in or at any place for such period of time as may be likely to endanger the health or welfare of such child.”
Defendant made a motion in limine to exclude evidence that at the time she was absent from the home she was at a tavern, that she participated in the consumption of intoxicants and anything related to the precise nature of her activities, as well as the fact that the two children died as a result of the fire. No error was assigned to any trial evidence ruling.
*698Although, strictly speaking, the challenged evidence was not material in that it was not probative of any fact essential to a conviction, it was not reversible error to admit it. A jury cannot be expected to understand a case tried in a vacuum. Evidence may be admitted to give a jury a complete picture of the events and to place the parties in their setting. In order to avoid undue prejudice to the parties, however, such evidence must be carefully limited to that sufficient for the purpose of completing the picture. We cannot say that it was an abuse of discretion to permit the subjects objected to in the motion in limine to be touched on. No trial objection to the extent of proof on those issues is assigned as error. We, therefore, assume that the evidence was properly admitted and turn to defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal.
The child neglect statute forbids only conduct by those having custody of a child under the age of ten years which, by the location and period of time for which a child is left unattended, constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in such a situation. State v. Mills, 52 Or App 777, 783, 629 P2d 861, rev den 291 Or 662 (1981). The standard of care under ORS 163.545 is “criminal negligence,” defined in ORS 161.085(10):
“ ‘Criminal negligence’ or ‘criminally negligent,’ when used with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense, means that a person fails to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to be aware of it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.”
State v. McLaughlin, 42 Or App 215, 219, 600 P2d 474, rev den 288 Or 173 (1979).
A careful reading of the language in ORS 163.545(1) and the standard of care in ORS 161.085(10) leads us to conclude that the legislature intended to require the state to produce evidence of a recognized or unrecognized dangerous condition in defendant’s home from which a substantial and unjustifiable risk could be inferred. As a result, the focus of the inquiry for the trial court in deciding whether to submit a charge of child neglect to the jury should be on evidence of *699such a risk to the children and whether the alleged failure to recognize the risk differed in an extraordinary way from what others would have done in similar circumstances. Whether a substantial and unjustifiable risk existed which defendant recognized or should have recognized is an essential element in the determination of her criminal culpability.
A thorough review of the record in this case reveals no evidence of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that defendant should have recognized would be likely to endanger her children. The state’s brief fails to point to any evidence from which the existence of a risk could be inferred. Evidence was presented that there were no dangers recognized, that the older child was responsible and had used a telephone in the past, that the neighborhood was a quiet one and that the house contained nothing posing any risk of fire. There was no contrary evidence, and the cause of the fire was not explained.
We can only conclude that the trial produced no evidence of a recognized or recognizable dangerous condition in defendant’s home from which a substantial and unjustifiable risk to support defendant’s conviction could be inferred. Under these facts, taken in the light most favorable to the state, the evidence does not prove that defendant left “the [children] unattended in or at [a] place for such a period of time as may be likely to endanger the health or welfare of such child.” ORS 163.545(1). In the absence of some showing of a failure to recognize a substantial and unjustifiable danger or risk to the children, the state has failed to produce any evidence to prove the essential element of criminal negligence. If the criminal negligence standard is to be removed from the child neglect statute, it should be done through the legislative process, not through judicial interpretation. We, therefore, conclude that no evidence exists from which an honest and well-motivated juror could find defendant guilty of criminally negligent child neglect beyond a reasonable doubt and reverse defendant’s conviction. State v. Krummacher, 269 Or 125, 523 P2d 1009 (1974).
We decline defendant’s invitation of reconsider the constitutionality of ORS 163.545. See State v. Mills, supra.
Reversed.