Court Opinion

ID: 9855327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:22:48.631392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:25:39.723427
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
Evidence presented at the adjudicatory hearing reflected the child demonstrated signs of mental retardation. SDCL 27B-1-1 defines “mentally retarded” as “any person with significant subaverage general intellectual functioning and deficits in adaptive behavior.”
SDCL 26-8-22.8 contains mandatory language. It mandates that a circuit judge provide for a suspension of an adjudicatory hearing “Whenever it appears from the *187evidence presented ... that the child may be mentally ill or mentally retarded ...” This circuit judge failed to do so. It was error.
SDCL 26-8-22.8(1) and (2) mandate that where the child appears to be mentally ill or mentally retarded that the child be examined by (a) a physician, psychiatrist or psychologist or (b) proceed as provided in Chapter 27A-9 or 27A-10. This circuit judge failed to do so. It was error: a critical state statute was violated. All dis-positional matters were, therefore, inherently flawed. Terminating the relationship between parent and child must be met by procedures which meet the requisite of the process clause. Lassiter v. Department of Social Services, 452 U.S. 18, 101 S.Ct. 2153, 68 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981).
A physician never testified at any of the hearings. Medical reports or neurological reports were not submitted into evidence. How, then, absent expertise, can the trial court or this Court know the causes and reasons for this infant’s development deficits? The answer is simple: They cannot. They are medically flying blind and the sky of certainty and truth is filled with fog.
Sadly, and lacking in education to do so, a Ms. Shoemaker relied upon “assumption in the causes and reasons for this infant’s developmental deficits.” Essentially, the blame was centered upon the mother. Biological factors, i.e., genes, chromosomes, and cellular activities were never explored, evidentiary-wise.
A sunshine of facts bolted through the fog when Dorothy Norris, a registered occupational therapist, testified at the April, 1989, “Review” Hearing (subsequent to the Dispositional Hearing) that the infant’s developmental deficits could be attributed to neurological problems. Obviously, this type of medical knowledge should have been brought forth during the adjudicatory stage. A neurological examination was performed by a neurologist; this was at the suggestion of Dorothy Norris; thereupon, it was determined through the testimony of one Mary Ohnemus that the neurological finding was that the child was diagnosed as a microcephalic (small headed, reflecting mentally retarded in most instances). All of this medical information, by state law, should have been produced at the adjudicatory hearing. If the correct procedure had been followed in the adjudicatory hearing, mother would not have lost her child in a dispositional hearing. A scenario could very well have been that, instead of this child severed in every relationship from her forever, she and the child could have seen one another in a hospital, institution or a social setting. Mother has, by a judicial error, been sentenced to life without her child.
Freedom of personal choice in matters of family life (Dear God, I want to see my child! I love my child!) is a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 1394, 71 L.Ed.2d 599, 606 (1982).
State intervention to terminate the relationship between a parent and a child must be accomplished by procedures meeting the requisites of the due process clause. Lassiter v. The Dept. of Social of Services, 452 U.S. 18, 101 S.Ct. 2153, 68 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981).
Here, the plain error doctrine should be invoked. A fundamental liberty interest is involved: The separation of mother from child and child from mother all during their lifetimes. SDCL 23A-44-15 provides:
Plain errors or defects affecting substantial rights may be noticed although they were not brought to the attention of the court, (emphasis supplied mine).
It is obvious why the state statute attends; it is to prevent miscarriages of justices. Should this mother lose her child forever because a lawyer did not raise the issue before the trial court? I think not. This mother, with an IQ of 68, should not forfeit her legal rights due to (1) a judicial error and then (2) an attorney’s error. It is, simply, not just.
A fatal error of practical and legal logic exists in the final paragraph of the majority opinion. Said paragraph, a “wind-up” of the unappreciated issues and authorities before us, fails to appreciate the harmful consequences of the adjudicatory phase in *188this case. Simply, an examination of the child by a qualified physician would have demonstrated that the child was mentally retarded and that the mental retardation was, in all likelihood, hereditary. If this is a correct platform of legal thought, then, at the adjudicatory stage the hearing should have been suspended and other alternatives should have been explored, alternatives far short of terminating a fundamental liberty interest at a later disposi-tional hearing. Retarded or not — mother and/or child — a fundamental liberty issue is at stake; retarded people are entitled to procedural safeguards which assuredly includes a medical diagnosis so an intelligent cause of legal action may be pursued. These unfortunate, biologically deprived people need social help and love, not separation forever! Their rights simply do not “evaporate.” Santosky, supra. “It is hazardous, however, to assume that moving a child from an imperfect home will benefit the child.” Santosky, supra. Accord: In Interest of S.L.H., 342 N.W.2d 672, 677 (S.D.1983); Matter of M.S.M., 320 N.W.2d 795 (S.D.1982).
Should people of low IQs have any less legal rights than those of high IQs? Love is for whom? Children are for whom? The State?