Court Opinion

ID: 9630300
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:07:48.198999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:36.082047
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting in part.
Except for its treatment of defendant’s conviction for third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, the Court’s opinion receives my full endorsement. My disagreement on the child-endangerment charge is minor indeed, being directed not at the *665majority’s flawless exposition of the law but rather at the application of that law to the facts in this record. However, in one sense the disagreement is significant: the Court would vacate the third-degree child-endangerment conviction and remand for retrial only on the fourth-degree category of that offense, while I would permit retrial on the third-degree charge.
The Court concludes, ante at 662, 628 A.2d at 751, that “the evidence was not sufficient to justify the submission of the third-degree child-endangerment charge to the jury,” pointing to defendant’s and Ms. Brazilian’s living apart, the brevity of their relationship, the absence of a firm date for their marriage, and the paucity of evidence concerning the frequency with which defendant cared for the child victim. Ante at 662, 628 A.2d at 751. If you add to the foregoing, however, the facts that the child had been named “Steven” after defendant and another of Ms. Brazilian’s relatives; that defendant had planned to move into the area; that defendant had expressed the wish to adopt the child and the child’s four-year-old sister; and that when asked if the child was his, defendant twice told his interviewer, “Biologically, no.”, then a jury, under proper instructions as so clearly explicated in the Court’s opinion, could conclude that defendant had “assumed a caretaking function over the child on a continuing, regular, or recurrent basis,” ante at 662, 628 A.2d at 751.
I would therefore remand for retrial on the third-degree child-endangerment charge as well as on the murder charge.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI and STEIN — 7.
Concurring — Justice O’HERN — 1. ■
Concurring in part; dissenting in part — Justice CLIFFORD— 1.