Bill seeks child neglect felony

Hickory senator looks for support

RALEIGH -- Prosecutors and police had a tough time figuring out how to punish Michelle Dawn Richardson for leaving her newborn baby wedged between a toilet and the bathroom wall in a Zebulon McDonald's in December.

No criminal charge fit just right. Richardson's baby lived, so it wasn't murder. She didn't beat her son and he's expected to be healthy, so it didn't seem like felony child abuse. The child had been "abandoned" for less than the six months required for the felony abandonment law to kick in.

Richardson fell into a hole in the law that child advocates want the General Assembly to plug. On Thursday, Sen. Austin Allran from Hickory asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to create a law that enables prosecutors to treat a caretaker's neglect of a child as a felony.

Zebulon Police Lt. Chris Bray wishes such a law had been on the books when dealing with Richardson, who was linked with the baby boy through surveillance pictures at the fast-food restaurant.

"This law would have been an asset," said Bray, who helped handle the case. "This baby could have died. It was 20 degrees that night. If the doors had been locked and the baby hadn't been found till morning, who knows what would have happened. It's absurd to think you couldn't know it could hurt him."

Richardson, 27, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of misdemeanor neglect for ditching a child she had delivered an hour before in her Wendell home. As part of her punishment, Richardson will be under the watch of a probation officer for five years while she works with social workers to get her son back, said her attorney, Jeff Cutler.

Cutler said this week's resolution was the right one.

"Michelle could be a really good mother," he said. "The goal [of the plea deal] was to make sure she never gets in a place where that happens again."

Child advocates say that prosecutors should have at least had the option to reach for a stiffer penalty. Allran, the bill's sponsor, expects the new law to pass this session, though on Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee referred the matter to a subcommittee for further discussion.

Prosecutors across the state have struggled to hold accountable parents who failed to protect their children.

Kayley Tabor, a prosecutor in Chatham County, couldn't figure out how to deal with one drunken mother who took her toddler for a crazed joyride in her car. While the child wasn't harmed and the mother never meant to hurt her child, Tabor thought there should have been a more serious charge than misdemeanor neglect to curb the mother's actions in the future.

"We have the duty to protect future victims," Tabor said. "We have to look in the future, not just what's in the present."

Leaders of the state's Child Fatality Task Force, a legislative subcommittee that studies child deaths, have heard from prosecutors and law enforcement officers across the state who want a felony endangerment law. Forty-four other states -- including Tennessee and Virginia -- already have laws that classify some forms of neglect as felonies, according to a task force report.

If passed, the law would create three levels of child endangerment, each corresponding to the threat to the child. It wouldn't matter whether the caregiver meant to harm the child or the child was actually hurt.

Thursday, some senators raised questions about the absence of the caregiver's intentions from the statute. They peppered Allran with "what-ifs." One senator asked if he could be charged if his 15-year-old got hurt while he left him unattended. Another senator demanded to know if letting an 8-year-old walk barefoot was neglectful.

Allran said he is confident he can ease those concerns when his bill is taken up by the subcommittee.