Retributive justice in Killingsworth


I was in New Haven today, and happened to notice this story (Woman accused of poisoning baby) on the front page of the Register, as I passed a newspaper vending machine. Sounds heinous, doesn't it? Anyway, I was finished with my hearing, so I had time to give it a read through the little plastic window:

MADISON — Police arrested a Killingworth woman Monday who they say inadvertently poisoned a baby less than a month old at a family gathering in Madison last summer after the woman got pesticides on her shirt while working in her garden.

Nicole Burger, 40, of 13 Buell Hill Road, turned herself in to police on charges of risk of injury to a child, a class C felony that carries the possibility of 10 years in prison, and misdemeanor reckless endangerment.

Burger was holding her infant nephew at a home in Madison Sept. 10 and at some point the baby began to have trouble breathing, said Lt. Robert Stimpson. The baby apparently had been sucking on Burger’s shirt, he added.

I am truly at a loss to understand this, and I wonder if this poor lady will get half the sympathetic press that Julie Amero did.

This woman faces 10 years in jail for, at most, negligence.

I seem to recall that there are three rationales for putting people in prison: retribution and/or rehabilitation and/or deterrence. It is rather difficult to see how either of the last two rationales will be advanced by punishing this lady, who no doubt already has suffered enough (a phrase commonly applied only to Republican crooks, but in this case probably apt). That leaves retribution, which has slowly but surely become the overriding principle in our criminal law (again, Republican crooks excepted). But even in our increasingly warped and paranoid society, are there really people who would want to punish this lady for this? Why would a prosecutor make the decision to bring charges?

Hmmm, sounds like the kind of thing that could end up being argued in a moot court competition.

The baby is fine, by the way.
Posted: Tuesday - April 10, 2007 at 07:45 PM          

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