Court Opinion

ID: 9689834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:48:39.669402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:52.467849
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J.
¶ 25. (concurring). This is a very difficult case, one in which courts are understandably reluctant to get involved.
¶ 26. It is important to note at the outset what this case is all about: It is about a father of nine children who intentionally refuses to support them and was convicted of such.
¶ 27. The two dissents frame the issue in such a way that Oakley's intentional refusal to pay support evolves into an inability to pay support. This case is not at all about an inability to pay support; it is about the intentional refusal to pay support. The difference between an intentional refusal to pay support and an inability to pay support is highly significant and, for me, decisive.
¶ 28. If this case was about the right of the state to limit a person's right to procreate based on his abil*479ity to pay support, the position articulated by Justice Bradley, I would in all likelihood join her dissent.
¶ 29. If this case was about the right of the state to prohibit a person's right to procreate based on his likely unwillingness or inability to support a child financially in the future, Justice Sykes' position, I would in all likelihood join her dissent.
¶ 30. This case is about a man who intentionally refuses to pay support regardless of his ability to do so. That was the dilemma faced by the sentencing court, and that is what led to the court's order.1
¶ 31. The dissents conclude that the majority's means of advancing the state's interest is not narrowly tailored to advance the state's interest. The dissents fail to advance any realistic alternative solution to what they concede is a compelling state interest. As long as the defendant continues to intentionally refuse to pay support, the alternatives posed by the dissents will end up with incarceration — which of course accomplishes indirectly what the dissents say the state cannot do directly.
¶ 32. Accordingly, I am unpersuaded by the dissents.
¶ 33. I conclude that the harm to others who cannot protect themselves is so overwhelmingly apparent and egregious here that there is no room for question. Here is a man who has shown himself time and again to be totally and completely irresponsible. He lives only *480for himself and the moment, with no regard to the consequences of his actions and taking no responsibility for them. He intentionally refuses to pay support and has been convicted of that felony. The harm that he has done to his nine living children by failing to support them is patent and egregious. He has abused at least one of them. Under certain conditions, it is overwhelmingly obvious that any child he fathers in the future is doomed to a future of neglect, abuse, or worse. That as yet unborn child is a victim from the day it is born.
¶ 34. I am not happy with this result, but can discern no other. And the dissents provide none. Accordingly, I join the majority opinion.
¶ 35. I am authorized to state that Justice JON P. WILCOX and Justice N. PATRICK CROOKS join this concurrence.

 Obviously, Justice Bradley and I differ as to the effect of the circuit court's order. Read in the context of the entire record,
I conclude that if Oakley were to show the court a good faith effort to support his children, the order would be amended. See majority op. at ¶ 15 and notes 20 and 21. As the record now stands, Oakley was convicted of an intentional refusal to support his children in any manner.