Court Opinion

ID: 9690490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:15:28.9731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:57.784671
License: Public Domain

Josephine Linker Hart, Judge, dissenting. I agree that the trial court did not err in deciding to terminate Alfred Lee’s parental rights. However, I find the majority decision to apply the same “extreme remedy” to the mother, Krystal Lee, completely unjustified by law or fact. Remarkably, this court has affirmed the termination ofKrystal Lee’s parental rights despite the fact that, by the majority’s own reckoning, she has complied with the directives of the trial court and the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Moreover, Ms. Lee has obviously showed considerable parenting ability because she raised two children to teenage who by all evidence in this case are “emotionally healthy” and “great kids.” Obviously, the case plan was not so much a roadmap to reunification as a moving target. I ascribe the majority’s decision in large part to its inability to use a calendar. First, the majority relies on the testimony of psychologist Paul Deyoub, which I contend is problematic in the extreme. Prior to the August 24, 2007, termination hearing, Dr. Deyoub’s only contact with Ms. Lee occurred when he conducted a psychological evaluation on August 8, 2006. At that point, the mother had been separated from her husband for less than two weeks, when he opined that she had made “no appreciable progress to an independent lifestyle and would probably take up with another dominant figure even if the father did not return.” Despite Deyoub’s dire predictions, in the ensuing year since he evaluated Ms. Lee, she had lived independently, secured employment, and had not taken up with another dominant figure. The trial court had the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but inexplicably failed to take advantage ofit. The majority does not explain why it is proper in its de novo review to compound this error. Likewise, the majority errs when it relies on Camarillo-Cox v. Arkansas Department of Human Services, 360 Ark. 340, 201 S.W.3d 391 (2005), as support for its holding. It suggests that Ms. Lee’s compliance efforts were only manifest “as termination becomes more imminent.” This holding is belied by the record. The adjudication hearing for the two teenage children in this case was held on April 25, 2006, but the actual adjudication order was not filed for record until May 22, 2006. The first review hearing was held on August 29, 2006, and the review order states that the mother had been cooperating for “approximately a month.” The mother continued to “cooperate,” completed the case plan, and remained in compliance right up until termination of her rights. This means that her supposedly dilatory “improvement” manifested in a matter of few weeks after the adjudication. Accordingly, this case is not at all like Trout v. Arkansas Department of Human Services, 359 Ark. 283, 197 S.W.3d 486 (2004), and its progeny, where the appellate courts of this state have held that last-minute cooperation is insufficient. The majority’s finding that “Mother was not capable of caring for the children because she had not addressed the environmental issues” is no more sound. Environmental neglect was not the reason for removal of the teenage children and rectifying “environmental issues” was never part of the case plan. Accordingly, while the case plan is but a moving target, the asserted grounds of “environmental issues” is but a mirage. Although the majority cites Kight v. Arkansas Department of Human Services, 94 Ark. App. 400, 231 S.W.3d 103 (2006), for the proposition that termination of parental rights is an “extreme remedy,” glaringly absent is any consideration, by either the trial court or the majority, of what action might be utilized to protect the children short of this “extreme remedy.” Because we have terminated the parental rights of Alfred Lee, who is currently serving a prison sentence for drug offenses, these teenage children will almost certainly not be at risk for the remainder of their minority, when and if their father is released from prison during that time. Upon termination of Alfred’s parental rights, the children came under the protection of the criminal-justice system. Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-26-502 (Repl. 2006) would impose criminal liability on Ms. Lee if she “accept or acquiesce” in Alfred Lee taking any physical custody of the teenage children. Additionally, the trial court had at its disposal its contempt power to ensure that Alfred did not ever again victimize the children. Whether or not Ms. Lee chose to continue her relationship with her husband was none of the State’s business, and I deplore the fact that this court has ratified such an unjustified intrusion into her personal life. Finally, I cannot ignore the fact that the goal in this case was changed from reunification to termination of parental rights only after Ms. Lee protested ADHS’s decision to retain custody of her teenage children. When she proved to be much more than the door mat that Dr. Deyoub imagined her to be, ADHS — and the trial court — punished her brutally for her insolence. To this court’s ever-lasting shame, it affirmed. Heffley, J., joins.