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Posted on 12/02/2005 3:04:41 PM PST by NYer
Honolulu, Dec. 02, 2005 (CNA) - Yesterday, the Hawaii state Supreme Court handed over a precedent-setting opinion, ruling that 32-year old Tayshea Aiwohi could not be convicted of killing her unborn child, because at the time, it was not a “person.”
In July of 2001, Aiwohi gave birth to her son, Treyson, who died two days later due to his mother’s use of methamphetamine while she was pregnant.
She was initially convicted of manslaughter but was able to appeal the decision all the way to the high court. To date, no appeals court in the U.S. has ever upheld an manslaughter charge for a mother who caused the death of her child while pregnant.
In their Thursday decision, all five of Hawaii’s Supreme Court Justices agreed that the charge should be overturned because, they said, the child was not a “person” when Aiwohi smoked the drug.
When he was born, Treyson was found to have had high levels of methamphetamine in his system and Aiwohi even admitted to having taken a “hit” on the morning of his birth.
According to the Honolulu Advertiser, City Deputy Prosecutor Glenn Kim, who handled the trial and appeal, was disappointed in the decision. "We continue to believe that babies such as Treyson Aiwohi deserve the protection of the law," he said.
"And we also continue to believe that people like Tayshea Aiwohi doing what she did to her baby continue to deserve to suffer the consequences of the law for those actions."
"It" had a name + "it" died = not a person.
Sick. Born, lived two days but not a person. Just freakin' sick.
Two hundred years ago, a black man wasn't considered to be a person either. Liberal thinking has certainly brought us a long way...
And what gestation age was the nonperson when he was born and breathed for two days?
Agreed.
He was born, therefore he was a person. What a bunch of IDIOTS.
Possibly this is the kind of case that could trigger a review of Roe if it got to the SCOTUS?
"At what point after birth.....breathing on one's own after exiting the womb.....does one become a person?? Graduation from college??"
When they vote for a Democrat, they become whole.
And I thought things were bad in the 60's when I grew up........Dear God in Heaven!
The complication is that she damaged the fetus as chattel, and that damage killed it later when it was a person. Since she never damaged a legal person, manslaughter is not an applicable charge; the baby came into personhood with a fatal condition, for legal purposes. This is one of those unavoidable edge cases that necessarily exist in any consistent application of law. We might not like the result, but the ruling of the Supreme Court seems correct to me.
All appointed and have come up with some "innovative" new laws.
An interesting thing for Catholics to know is that Hawaii was the first state to legalize abortion when a practicing Catholic was the Governor as was the Speaker of the House who introduced and promoted the legalization of abortion in Hawaii. Where was the church? As silent as it is today.
I would like to think that our laws should protect this infant child. Women who do this to their children are abusing their babies every day while inside the womb. The children that make it out alive, do so at a great cost (I'm not talking the money kind of cost either). They are afflicted with all sorts of problems from the get-go. I don't think manslaughter is too much to charge.
Under common law, post-quickening abortion was considered manslaughter. I don't know what the charge would be if criminal damage to the quick fetus resulted in postnatal death, but it would be at least manslaughter.
Even if the fetus was "chattel" for legal purposes, the law (particularly common law) still has to apply some degree of common sense. OK, so the fetus was "chattel". But it's undeniably a type of chattel that becomes a legal person, so if you deliberately do something to it that causes the legal person to die, one would think the law should draw the obvious conclusion.
What do you think the law would say if criminal damage to a fetus caused the baby, postnatally, to experience chronic agonizing pain, and it could be shown that this would not have been the case if the damage hadn't occurred?
No doubt in my mind.....it's fixin' to get ugly at SCOTUS.
The infant was murdered and he was already 9 months old...
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