Court Opinion

ID: 9701516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:22:38.095237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:24.289015
License: Public Domain

KELLEHER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the result reached by my colleague, Mrs. Justice Murray, and would merely repeat what I said earlier when in dissenting in Presley v. Newport Hospital, 117 R.I. 177, 193, 365 A.2d 748, 756 (1977), I took the position that the General Assembly, in enacting our civil wrongful death statute, never intended that a stillborn fetus was to be considered a person within the context of that statute. What I said in Presley applies with equal force to our vehicular homicide statute. The resolution, if any, for the issue presented in the present appeal should take place in the General Assembly, where the Legislature, if it wishes to impose criminal liability for the death of an unborn child, can determine at what point in the development of the fetus criminal sanctions will be applied.