Court Opinion

ID: 9734642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:40:34.452181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:49.785328
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent. Though this is a close and difficult case, I am not persuaded that the evidence is sufficient as a matter of law to support the conviction.
In State v. Loss, 295 Minn. 271, 204 N.W.2d 404 (1973), this court noted the difficulty of establishing the guilt of a defendant accused of injuring a small child other than by circumstantial evidence and reiterated this rule to determine the sufficiency of such evidence:
The applicable rule to determine the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence was set forth originally in State v. DeZeler, 230 Minn. 39, 52, 41 N.W.2d 313, 322 (1950), which held that circumstantial evidence will support a conviction only where the facts described by it—
“ * * * form a complete chain which, in the light of the evidence as a whole, leads so directly to the guilt of the accused as to exclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, any reasonable inference other than that of guilt * * *.”
In other words, circumstantial evidence “must do more than create a suspicion of guilt. It must point unerringly to the accused’s guilt.”
Id. at 281, 204 N.W.2d at 409 (citations omitted). In Loss, the 6-month-old victim was brought to the hospital by her father, who had been alone with the baby and reported that the child had fallen from the 2-feet-high bed on which she lay to the floor below. The child died of brain injuries the following day. Id. at 275, 204 N.W.2d at 405-06. X-rays disclosed a small skull fracture and a spiral, twisting-type fracture of her leg, findings which the doctors testified were inconsistent with the medical history given by the father. Id. at 275, 278, 204 N.W.2d at 406, 408. This court affirmed the father’s conviction of first-degree manslaughter, noting his temper, his exclusive control over the baby at the time the injuries occurred, and medical testimony to the effect that the baby’s injuries were unlikely to result from a 2-foot fall and that her death had not been caused by accident. Id. at 281, 282, 204 N.W.2d at 410. We held that “the establishment of the existence of a battered child, together with the reasonable inference of a battering parent,” was sufficient, in light of the circumstantial evidence, to convict the defendant father. Id. at 280, 204 N.W.2d at 409.
*848In State v. Goblirseh, 309 Minn. 401, 246 N.W.2d 12 (1976), defendant was convicted of the first-degree manslaughter of his 2-month-old daughter. The Goblirseh infant, like Brian Schleret, died of a subdural he-matoma. There, defendant father told medical authorities that the child had struck her head accidentally on a toy or on the side of her crib. The examining physician, however, did not believe that the injuries could have been caused accidentally. He testified, further, that the baby had suffered 13 fractured ribs, which were in various stages of healing at the time of her death. We affirmed the conviction, noting that the “fatal, nonaccidental, and traumatic head injury” occurred at a time when defendant exercised exclusive control over the infant. 309 Minn, at 406, 246 N.W.2d at 14.
In the case before us, Brian Schleret died of a rapidly growing blood clot, which, doctors testified, had formed between 2 and 24 hours before his death. Defendant Barbara Schleret exercised exclusive control over Brian during the morning of Wednesday, March 9. Unlike the defendants in Loss and Goblirseh, however, defendant gave medical authorities no unlikely account of an injury to Brian’s head that morning. She told no story which would account for recent trauma at all; rather, she told doctors that Brian had fallen down the stairs a week earlier, a history not inconsistent with test results showing that Brian had suffered a skull fracture which was 1 week old when he died. Unlike the infant victims in Loss and Goblirseh, Brian suffered no broken bones. He did not suffer the twisting fractures of the long bones, broken ribs, burns or whip lacerations frequently observed in battered children. None of the injuries or bruises was more than 1 week old. Although many of the state’s witnesses testified to Barbara’s harsh punishment of Brian, none indicated that they ever saw her use unreasonable force or deliberately injure the child.
In a first-degree manslaughter conviction, the victim’s death must result from an assault committed with such force that death or great bodily harm was foreseeable in light of the circumstances. As we recognized in Goblirseh, even in a battered child case, the crucial question is one of causation. The doctors who testified here indicated that the blood clot which caused Brian’s death probably resulted from trauma to Brian’s head occurring some time after the skull fracture. They conceded that a smaller force or trauma might be necessary to cause the blood clot once a skull fracture had been sustained, and that the linear fracture Brian suffered was not inconsistent with defendant’s “story” that he fell down the stairs and hit the back of his head against a wall a week before his death. Brian himself told his natural mother, Evelyn Kelly, that he fell down the steps. Defendant observed that Brian suffered speech and balance problems after the fall, and told her husband about these observations. Bertha Schleret, Brian’s grandmother, saw Brian fall and strike the left side of his forehead on a wooden toy on the evening of March 7.
In light of the evidence that, following Brian’s skull fracture, a minor trauma could have caused the subdural hematoma, I am not satisfied that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant could have foreseen that any blows she may have struck would lead to death or great bodily harm. Our holdings in Loss and Goblirseh do not require an inference that, when a child dies of unknown causes not inconsistent with accidental causes, the parent responsible for his care is criminally responsible for his death. Our holding in State v. Loebach, 310 N.W.2d 58 (Minn.1981), also makes clear that to introduce evidence of battering parent syndrome or to establish the character of the defendant as a battering parent is error unless the defendant first raises that issue. The error in this case was highly prejudicial. I would reverse.