Court Opinion

ID: 9525024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:59:16.176163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:35.536686
License: Public Domain

GARTZKE, P.J.
(concurring). I would hold that the complaint is sufficient. Throwing a child against a wall or into a crib exposes, and therefore subjects, a child to a serious physical injury, such as a severe bruise, bone fracture or internal injury, whether or not an injury resulted. That, in my view, is within the scope of sec. 940.201, Stats.
1 look to the dictionary definition of the verb “subjects” because sec. 940.201, Stats., provides that a per*255son who “subjects a child to cruel maltreatment” is a felon and does not require that the person “maltreat” the child. The dictionary definition is an appropriate guide because sec. 940.201, Stats., is the only part of the Criminal Code which uses the verb “subject” and because the verb has not been judicially defined in this state.
“Subject,” as a verb, is defined in Merriam Webster’s Third Neto International Dictionary (unabr. 1976) in material part as follows:
la: to bring under control or dominion .... b: to reduce to subservience or submission .... 2a: to make liable .... 4: to cause to undergo or submit to: make submit to a particular action or effect: EXPOSE ....
The import of these definitions and the synonym “expose” indicate that “subjects a child to cruel maltreatment” means to expose a child to maltreatment, whether or not the child directly suffers from maltreatment.
I agree with the trial court that the list of injuries in sec. 940.201, Stats., indicates a legislative intent that cruel maltreatment consists of serious physical injuries. It is difficult to conceive of a reason for listing “severe bruising, lacerations, fractured bones, burns, internal inj uries or any inj ury causing great bodily harm under s. 939.22(14)” except to illustrate by example what is meant by “cruel maltreatment.”
I cannot accept the majority’s view that the legislature included the examples of cruel maltreatment in sec. 940.201, Stats., only to remind prosecutors that cases reported under sec. 48.981, Stats., may be prosecuted. That conclusion implies that without the examples prosecutors would not know whether a “bodily injury which creates a high probability of death” or another injury described in sec. 939.22(14), Stats., was child abuse under sec. 940.201. The more reasonable inference is that the legislature intended the examples to restrict the scope of “cruel maltreatment” to physical injury.
*256Various forms of nonphysical maltreatment easily come to mind, but to bring' them within the reach of sec. 940.201, Stats., would be to ignore the illustrations provided by the legislature.