Court Opinion

ID: 9465124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:36:23.514364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:59.138383
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
I have a great deal of sympathy for this young woman who has spent a time in prison on a conviction of child abuse arising out of the death of her three-year old daughter, though generally the mother had been a loving and considerate one. My sympathy for the mother is enhanced by the fact that the person who inflicted the fatal injury upon the child has remained unpunished. I think, however, that the proof at trial did not permit a conclusion on our part that there was no evidence to support a finding of a violation of the statute by the mother.
*701Of course, a parent should not go to prison for an erroneous diagnosis of a child’s illness, but the Court of Appeals of Maryland has clearly held that the statute is violated if a custodian of a child knowingly withholds medical assistance and if the child’s condition is aggravated or if death ensues as a result of want of medical attention.1
Indeed, Maryland has long embraced the common law doctrine that one who, through gross negligence, fails to perform a legal duty owing to another as a result of which the other dies is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. See Palmer v. State, 223 Md. 341, 164 A.2d 467 (1960); Craig v. State, 220 Md. 590, 155 A.2d 684 (1954).
There can be no doubt here that the multiple bruises were not symptomatic of influenza. When the neighbor saw the child, she was moaning in pain. That and her comatose condition should have sig-nalled a more serious condition than the flu. That the mother recognized that there may have been internal injuries is supported by the testimony that she explained the child’s bruised condition to the neighbor by saying, “Tommy hits hard.”
One may suppose that this three-year old child had told her mother who had beaten her, and the record clearly indicates that Tommy Crockett was the lover of both of the women who shared the house with him. Thus, she explained to the neighbor that she had not sought a physician’s help because she was ashamed of the bruised condition of the child’s body and that if the child were seen by a physician she would have to explain the origin of the bruises.
I put no great weight on her exclamation after being informed that the child was dead, “I killed her”, but her statements to the neighbor before the child was dead of her reasons for not having sooner sought medical help furnished support for a finding that for some hours the mother consciously refrained from seeking medical help to protect Crockett from possible criminal charges and to support her own ego. Though the mother was generally loving and protective of her daughter, a conscious indulgence of such a preference is in violation of Maryland’s Child Abuse Law when earlier medical attention might have saved the child’s life.
I cannot agree that this conviction was devoid of evidentiary support.

. We are not met with the special problem which might be presented if the parent were a Christian Scientist or if the decision was one of a kind that ought to be left to parental discretion.