Pubdate: Sat, 27 Aug 2005
Source: Sioux City Journal (IA)
Copyright: 2005 Sioux City Journal
Contact:  http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/945
Author: Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS CONVICTION OF METH-USING DAD

DES MOINES -- The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of a 
man whose 1-year-old died after he left her alone in a bathtub while he 
slept off a methamphetamine high.

David Petithory, 25, of Des Moines, was found guilty of involuntary 
manslaughter, child endangerment, neglect of a dependent person and 
domestic abuse assault causing bodily injury in the death of his daughter 
Brooklin.

The Supreme Court said that parents can commit a crime when they expose 
their children to a risk, even if its the parents that pose the danger.

"The dangers of leaving one's children in the custody of actively using 
methamphetamine addicts cannot be denied," the court said. "No parent 
should leave his small children in the care of a meth addict -- the hazards 
are too great."

That danger exists even when the person giving the care is the parent, the 
high court said.

Court records said that on the night that Petithory and the child's mother 
celebrated the child's first birthday, he stayed up most of the night 
smoking meth and playing video games. Sleeping most of the next day, he 
awoke in the afternoon and decided to his Brooklin a bath.

After placing the child in the bathtub, Petithory fell asleep on a stairway 
outside the room. He was awakened by the screams of his 3-year-old daughter 
K.C. and found Brooklin face down in the water.

She suffered irreversible brain damage and died more than a month later on 
March 23, 2003.

At trial, Petithory defended himself by saying he sought to isolate his 
children from his drug abuse.

"He maintains he was a careful drug abuser, smoking it only in the basement 
where his children were not allowed," the court noted. "It remains however 
that both parents handled and consumed the illegal drug in the very house 
where the girls resided."

The youngster's older sister witnessed the drowning.

"We have long recognized the dangers and hazards of leaving one's children 
in the custody of chronic drug abusers," the court said. "Experience sadly 
teaches us that any hope that no parent would leave his children in the 
care of a meth addict is misplaced. The law, however, sets a standard of 
conduct for parents and rightly mandates that no parent should do so."

There's no distinction to be drawn when the meth addict a parent entrusts 
his children to is the parent himself, the court said.

"It does not matter that part of the danger to which Petithory exposed the 
children was himself," the court said. "The statute forbids a parent from 
exposing a child to danger, it does not distinguish among the sources of 
danger."
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