Accidents happen

Washburn student intern Krystle Dalke and I won in State v. Hernandez, No. 98,968 (Kan. App. Oct. 10, 2008), affirming Judge Young's dismissal of a Saline County aggravated child endangerment prosecution. The case stemmed from an accident where Ms. Hernandez' child wandered from his house and fell into a pond created by the heavy rains in May 2007. The COA reviewed cases from other states evaluating evidence of recklessness with regard to monitoring children:

The case law cited above persuasively supports the district court's finding insufficient evidence of reckless conduct was presented at the preliminary hearing to support the charge of aggravated endangerment of a child. The testimony established the defendant was alternating between cooking dinner and watching the children through a window. When the defendant looked away for "a moment," the children were gone and she went looking for them. The trailer park where the defendant lived was right behind the Dillons grocery store. While the defendant's supervision was certainly less than ideal, the time frame the children were left unsupervised in this case is far less than the 45 minutes the children were left alone in their front yard in [State v. Riggs, 2 S.W.3d 867 (Mo. App. 1999)] and the babysitter checking in once in 30 minutes on the children on the playground in [State v. McLeod, 846 N.E.2d 915 (Ohio App. 2006)], where the Missouri and Ohio courts found no reckless conduct.

As a result, the COA affirmed the dismissal.

[Update: the state did not file a PR and the mandate issued on November 13, 2008].