Guest Post: “Caylee’s Law” Could Make Me a Criminal

I am reminded of a quote from William S. Burroughs:

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”

These are horrible, horrible laws that will almost certainly get passed with the full support of the Mrs. Lovejoy’s of the country. Won’t somebody please think of the children who will grow up to be the adult offenders of all the laws we now pass to protect them?

I agree, “in a timely manner” is much too vague.The version I saw actually specified “within 24 hours” which seemed more than reasonable to me.

On the other hand “I couldn’t get a signal in the mall” is not an excuse since it is still possible to walk outside the mall to make a phone call instead of disappearing for 7 hours.

Good point, Selby. I was at a baseball game yesterday, and I wanted to see if it seemed like the throwing-the-ball-into-the-stands seemed different. Maybe it was just me, but it did. It seemed like a lot more balls were handed to kids (by security and ballboys around the perimeter), as opposed to being tossed, and one player who always throws a ball into the stands on his way into the dugout, didn’t.

I totally agree. This gets back to the notion that we have to be in constant communication with our children. There are so many situations where this law simply doesn’t make sense. If I send my older teenagers camping for three days, I really don’t want to hear from them – I want them to have a camping trip. God forbid something does happen, and I didn’t report it. Now I’ve committed a felony? It all gets back to “punish the parent” for what we used to call life.

The Caylee’s law proposed by Michele Crowder would make it a felony to not report a death after one hour, and a missing child after 24 hours not the vague “in a timely manner” reported here.

I agree however, this law is knee-jerk unnecessary that will cause more harm to innocent parents and their children. While I know how rare these high profile cases are, I’m imagining the innocent parents of a child that has been abducted going to jail because they thought their child was at a sleepover.

This online petition is exactly the reason why the uneducated have no business writing justice policy.

First off, pretty much every police department had policies in place where they won’t accept a missing person’s report until 24-48 hours in the first place in most circumstances because most missing persons reports are resolved on their own. For example, there was a missing kid story the other day where there was a huge search and the whole time the kid was hiding under the bed. That policy has changed in many places simply because of public fears.

Second, laws named after people lack rational or common sense approaches to crime fighting. We have Megan’s Law, the Adamn Walsh Act, Jessica’s Law, and a few others. We pass ill conceived knee jerk laws in the name of the person the law is named after. At least most states are rejecting AWA, if for nothing else but for budgetary reasons.

The real problem here is the definition of “missing” which is going to vary a lot from situation to situation. If I send my teenagers camping and I don’t expect to here from them every day (for whatever reason) then the fact that I don’t get a call doesn’t mean they’re “missing” but if they didn’t arrive back home or call within a few hours of their ETA than I would. On the other hand if my teenager doesn’t show up at the friend’s house she tell me she is going to and goes AWOL for 7 hours that to me is “missing.” I wouldn’t call the police at that point but I would definitely consider her to be “missing” (which was the reason I pointed out that “no signal in the mall” is not an excuse).

I’m not 100% in favor if this law by any means but I do feel that some of the negative response to it is as knee-jerk and reactionary as the feelings that led to its proposal in the first place.

whats next? say they are gonna retroactively charge jaycee dugards mom for letting he walk to the bus stop alone?

i think this post and its timing are in severe bad taste. or do we really believe they will prosecute for such a minescule amount of time?

Somer thomspsons mom and her family scoured the neighborhood for her for about the same amonut of time as your guessing here, because she had run off before. she was never charged and was not lynched for doing it either.

i wonder sometimes who does the ‘knee jerk reaction’, the law or this site.

Hmm, wonder if this would hurt parents who kick their kids out of the house?

I’ve got no problem with the law provided the final version has some common sense built into it. If you really truly don’t know where your kid is overnight then there is a problem. If you send them camping they’re not missing and they’re not presumed runaways.

I disagree with the proposal for the obvious reasons as stated, but most of all simply because this case was EXTREMELY overhyped, much like JonBenet Ramsay before it, and I’m simply tired of hearing about it in anyway whatsoever. No disrespect, but what makes her anymore special than any other murdered child? Thank you very much Nancy DIS-Grace!

LRH

From what i get about this law is, it’s not about going after parents who don’t report their child missing because they don’t know exactly where the child is at one particular moment, or to go after parents that in good faith don’t report their kid missing because the figure they are at the mall with friends.
It’s about giving courts more options and charges to bring against a person who is responsible for the death of their child and trying to hide it, or for allowing and a spouse, or boy/girlfriend to abuse and kill the child, and try to hide it and not report it to authorities.
It’s not so much about protecting children as it’s about punishing those that do them harm.

Scott, why do you think we wouldn’t care if our own child went missing?! Of course any of us would be devasteted if their child was abused or murdered. I don’t question your love for your children just because you let them be driven around in a car. You’re child is more likely to be killed while in a car than to be kidnapped.

Every child’s death is a tragedy and it is natural to want to prevent anything from happening to our loved ones, But, we need to let our kids explore their worlds and realize what the real risks are and what things are less likely to happen. That is what this site is all about.

I am sure you are a caring parent, as are the parents on this site. We apparently just have a different philosophy with regards to child safety.

I have dispatched for a variety of police departments over the last 15 years, albeit all in the same state, and not a single one has a policy of waiting 24-48 hours to take a report of or enter a missing person. Juvenile reports are taken immediately, and the information is entered into the national database. Even missing adults are entered quite quickly, though people calling in the middle of the night to report their significant other late getting home are often reminded that adults have the right to come and go as they please, and asked if they are willing to wait to report it til morning. Even in those situations, at minimum all the hospitals and the jail will be checked for the missing adult, and an attempt to locate aired.

I don’t know if the 24-48 hours thing comes from TV, or if my state is just weird, but ..there you go.

Scott, since you were so disgusted by Larry’s post, maybe you could explain to us why Caylee Anthony’s death was/is so much more important than any other child’s death? Because that’s the point he was making.

beth my point was it seemed that ‘its just another dead child, whats so special?” an apathetic, de-sensitized comment to me. really? is that what we are coming to?

sure caylee’s case got more attention cause of her so called excuse for a mother and her actions. there are lpenty of other stories out there, haleigh cummings, shaynia davis, hailey dunn ect, and they get lots of press too. it doesnt mean they are less important they caylee. nor are the ones who dont get any press at all. it just seems, if we ignore caylee, we will find it ‘acceptable’ to ignore them all.

see my above larry

As much as I agree with you, I don’t think a “timely manner” for a 13 year old is 7 hours.
We’re talking about a mother who didn’t report her small toddler missing for 31 days. There’s a big difference there.

I think that if your child is missing for 24 hours, you should be required by law to report it.

Set up a computer generated macro. Every 50 minutes, it autocalls the police nonemergency number: “This is an automated call in accordance with Caylee’s Law. (Date) (Time) my child (name) may have died in the last hour.” Save a recording of the call for evidence.

That way, if a child does die, no matter when, the police have been notified within the last hour. No problem.

If police departments nationwide get tens of millions of calls like this every day, maybe they’ll tell the legislature to knock it off. Yeah, I live in dreamland.

See to me, if my son is spending the weekend at his friend’s house and he does not report home on Sunday evening like he was supposed to then I report him missing then. That would be the start of when I knew he was missing. Even if he went actually went missing Sat morning. I didn’t know that. Now if I waited till Wed to report him missing on Sunday evening THAT would be a crime and be suspicious as all get out. If you thought they were someone safe and had no other reason to think otherwise, then it should not be a crime. So they would have to PROVE you knew they were missing and did not report it. Not just say “Oh they are gone 24 hours parents are going to jail.” When the parents did not find out till 5 hours ago.

Still though I always checked in with my parents at least once a day when I was at someone’s house or on a trip. So in most cases the 24 hours should cover it just fine.

Like I said, I’m against it, because as the original poster illustrates, it potentially makes criminals out of people who aren’t. Also, as I stated, it’s ridiculous that people are responding to this case with such a level of emotion. It’s ridiculous. I mean really–assuming that there SHOULD be a requirement for reporting within that time-frame (and I’m not sure there should be), we failed to realize this until all of a sudden because of Casey Anthony now we do? Good grief, we weren’t capable of seeing it PRIOR to now?

Caylee Anthony is NO MORE important than any other child who was murdered, and doesn’t deserve any special attention nor any special laws written in the aftermath of her murder. Same thing with JonBenet Ramsay and Laci Peterson.

LRH

I agree with Scott. That was harsh Larry.

Another aspect of the proposed law is to make it a felony to not report a child’s death within one hour. I can think of circumstances where caregivers, who have done nothing to harm their child, are unable to or fail to report their child’s death within an hour. I read there is another aspect – people are trying to prevent parents of missing children from being able to profit, in any financial way, from the missing child. Seriously? You know, cause that happens all the time. Parents are constantly “losing” their kids so that they can make a bunch of money.
Here’s another good piece about the problems with knee-jerk, reactionary laws like this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/caylees-law-casey-anthony-_n_893953.html

Teenagers and tweens are supposed to be learning to manage their own time and communicate with home using borrowed phones or whatever they need to. Then they get grounded if they don’t. This is so vague. It basically criminalizes one of the classic growth opportunities of youth: sneaking out, and getting caught and facing the music at home.

some missing kids parents write books because its better healing for them to put it in words.

others like the anthonys and mccanns do it to make blood money off the kids they murdreded

Now this failing to report a death with an hour I may disagree with. Does it specify that stillborns or miscarriages count as a “Death”? I have been fighting locally against some laws that try to make women who have miscarriages or stillborns go under scrutiny so that they would have to report to police during their time of pain and need and be investigated. That is something I VERY much disagree with. So I wonder what the fine print on that one is?

Now sure, not reporting a 5 year old dead right away is wrong. Wouldn’t you be calling an ambulance the second your child got hurt?

Larry: Since I don’t pay much attention to the news I actually had to look the case up after the verdict because I didn’t know anything about it. So no, obviously it was not that all over the place. I never heard about it till a friend on Facebook posted her outrage over the mother getting away with it.

I do believe the mother did it. It was because it took so long to find the body that she got away with it. All the evidence was gone by then. Stuff like hairs, blood, fibers were long gone after a month. Now if the mother had to report her missing and they found her in a couple days, the mother might not have gotten off so easy. 3 years for killing a sweet little girl?! Not enough punishment!

Caylee has no control over how things went down after her death. It is not her fault the media jumped all over it. She still deserves all the prayers and love that people have shown for her. So does every child. If you want to get mad at the media, go for it. But, don’t blame Caylee or her family for this media poostorm.

If it bothers you so much, do like I do and stop watching the news. I hardly ever hear any of this crap because I choose to detach myself from it.

Dolly Yes, as you state, I have pretty much stopped watching the news for this very reason. I only knew about it because everytime I went to Yahoo!’s home page to view whatever, I kept seeing the name over & over. I still ignored it. Then someone–like you said–posted outrage over the verdict in the Facebook realm. Then I researched to find out about it, determining that it was basically JonBenet Ramsay all over again–then I actually replied in the post “I don’t care why people care so much about this one case.” In fact, I did that to very single friend who made a big deal about it. Believe it or not, we’re still friends–in real life as well as on the site.

I do believe that most of the responses I’ve seen from people, and CERTAINLY the media’s way over-the-top coverage of every tidbit, it indeed about enjoying a freak show and nothing else. It’s the same deal that happened with JonBenet Ramsay 15 years ago, and I was saying the same things then I am now–that is, “what’s so special about her?”

LRH

I live near Georgia and that was the one I was talking about. I technically live in TN but have friends and family in GA and I was fighting for them!

What about SIDS?

My doctor, and his nurse wife, lost a daughter to SIDS a few years ago. Honestly, if there were ever parents who wanted a child more, or who took better care of thier child… well, I don’t know them.

But by the time they woke up in the morning to discover thier daughter had passed away they were HOURS past the “one hour” deadline in this law.

All it would take is a over eager DA, and … thier tragedy would be compounded to such a terrible degree it has no words.

Dolly, you think it should be a crime to not report an adult if you know he is “missing”? Aren’t adults free to leave without notice and never come back (assuming they aren’t leaving a legal duty undone)? So like, the co-worker who was rumored to run off with the delivery truck driver should have been reported to the police? What do you think the police should do if an adult decides to hit the road and keep on walking?

LRH – point of law. One is either innocent or guilty. A separate issue is the jury’s verdict – the verdict can be guilty or not guilty. One cannot be found innocent by a jury. Not a lawyer – just a pedant.

Speaking of Nancy Grace – there was a little “disappeared” kid a few years ago – I wish I could remember his name – Nancy Grace had his mom on her show and tore her apart because she was so sure the woman had hurt and hidden the boy. The next thing you know, the mom has killed herself, and there went pretty much any chance of finding the boy. The boy’s dad is still looking for him, as far as I know. BTW, he was two, too. Nancy of course insisted she’d done the right thing by viciously accusing this mom on national TV. Needless to say I will not allow Nancy’s face on my TV screen for one split second, ever again.

Yes Jeanette, I would think SIDS would be another thing they would have to make special exceptions for the rule.

SKL: If an adult is suspected to be missing under unusual or possibly dangerous circumstances then you should report it. We had a woman vanish recently in our city and her husband acted like he thought she just ran out on him but her parents suspected her killed her and dumped her body. So it was a good thing they reported her missing so it can be investigated and so far the consensus is that he did in fact have her killed or killed her.

You can bet if my husband just vanished even though he is an adult, I would be calling the police if he did not turn up within a couple hours. Why? Because he never leaves the house since he works at home and is not the type to just up and go somewhere. He leaves a note or tells me if he does. So I would wait about 2 hours and then I would start calling around to find him. After 4 hours I would be calling hospitals and jails and after 6 hours I would be filing a missing person’s report. Some people are very predictable and routine following and if something odd happens it doesn’t take long to realize foul play was involved. If it turns out he just decided to leave us with not telling us. Then the police can figure that out in their investigation, but I am not letting a murderer go unchecked just because he is an adult and might have left of his own accord.

The fact is that Casey probably would not have even been charged under Caylee’s law. A dead child is not a missing child. If they want to prosecute Casey for murder, they cannot simultaneously argue that Caylee was at some point a missing child.

Dolly, you actually would not be reporting your husband missing after 6 hours because the police won’t usually take reports until 24 to 48 hours have passed. Even then, they aren’t going to investigate unless there is some thing other than a missing adult since adults are allowed to come and go whenever they want. And not all relationships are yours. Some people are not creatures of habit. Some couples don’t closely monitor each other. If my husband frequently works long hours without checking in, am I in violation if I don’t report him missing for 48 hours?

Or even back to the kid realm. If I believe my teen has run off with a friend to the beach for the weekend against my prohibition so I don’t report her missing because I don’t want her to go to kiddie jail (I just plan to ground her for life when she returns) , am I in violation? If I’m right? If I’m wrong? Kids get prosecuted for “run away” all the time. Doesn’t this law kinda make parents HAVE to rat out their kids, when they’d rather deal with a discipline problem themselves, to save their own asses? Is that really how we want parents to be stuck parenting? Sending their kids to youth detention to save their own asses?

Wow. I can’t believe any of you would be supporting this kind of law. Isn’t this the same site that is against teens being charged with statutory rape by having sex with their girlfriends? That was a knee-jerk reaction that has had devastating consequences and we want to do that again? Any law that gets written in a hurry needs to be shelved for a while until the emotions die down and logic can take over.

Larry, I agree totally with you. This case has become headline news for reasons I still haven’t figured out.

I fear some of these responders – as is this proposed law – may be a symptom of the greater pathology of the ills that are troubling this country. Who deserves to be parents? Who deserves the rights of the constitution? Who deserves to live and breathe…as determined in the court of the parochial public opinion? Who is worthy of protection under the law?

“After all…this is how I live, and how I believe EVERYONE else ought to live.” The result is a general psychosis that is gripping Salem…er, ah the US these days. Fear emanating from a rare case (fancy that) can lead to lightning speed legislation that would affect the rights and lives of millions. Should one not subscribe to what Nancy and her minions espouse, then one is highly suspect, if not downright vilified.

We have indeed found politically how to effortlessly push a law through sans ANY scrutiny or concerns for collateral damage, false imprisonment, and future hysteria ; place out in front the name of an unfortunate child. Whoa to those who dare risk a nay vote. That would mean the career of said politico – and/or judge – would have the life duration of a housefly.

Keep your curtains drawn, y’all. The Stepford’s have moved in next door. Soon to be mayor, editor, police Chief, and leader of the PTA. Do what they say or they’ll take you away.

Face it, folks…laws like this are NOT designed to do anything but garner votes. The next politico in line will attempt to make the law tougher. It’s what we have evolved into.

Gotta run now…can’t miss the tar and feathers sale at the Home Depot.

@lollipoplover – off topic, but your son is so right! And how come people are able to sue over such silly things? A real tragedy for the individual family, but it sounds like their kid did something really dumb, like kids are apt to do sometimes, and suffered the sad consequences of it.
Growing up, one of the boys in my class, whose dad was an agricultural contractor, one day decided to do just what dad had, many times, told him not to do – while dad had his back turned, junior decided to climb up and investigate the chute of a combine harvestor. Junior was nine at the time, old enough to know better, but a bit mischievous. Sadly, that was the end of junior’s adventures, but there was never any nonsense about suing the combine harvestor manufacturer. Just one very, very sad family…..No laws about farm equipment would have made any difference either.

I do not support laws named after dead children because they are almost always based on outrage and grief rather than on logic.

Dolly, you don’t seem to understand. This law will not affect Casey Anderson, the person who many believe actually killed her child and hid the evidence. It will ONLY affect parents whose kids are discovered to be absent in the future – most of whom will NOT have suffered at the hands of their parents.

And yes, if someone goes missing AND you suspect foul play (of an illegal nature), you would file a report. But making a law forcing everyone to file just because they know someone is on an unexplained absence?

I know you feel strongly about what people should do in certain circumstances. But that’s not a reason to make a law. Thats just now how it works in a “free country.” Funny thing is, even without a law, every sane parent with the least morals would report their kid missing if they believed the child could be in danger. So there is no need for a law forcing it. When a law isn’t absolutely needed for order and safety, it shouldn’t be enacted.

If this law was such a great idea, why didn’t we have it before? In general, laws that humans use to govern themselves are tried and true, like the golden rule. Of course, you can always find some silly law about not getting a fish drunk or something. IF this law had existed, would the outcome have been any different? Will it prevent some other stupid person from waiting 1 month to report a dead child? No, it will not. It will just mean that the taxpayers have the privilege of hosting that dummy longer in prison. It seems like people wished there was some technicality to snag Casey so she wouldn’t have been released – like Al Capone and the tax code. Can we prevent people from winning the Darwin Award or appearing in the Least Competent Criminal section of News of the Weird? Maybe that should be our goal.

Spending hours talking about minutiae for the duration of the news cycle is the state of the media. Things get blown way out of proportion. Nancy Grace and the other judgmental haters wouldn’t be on TV if people didn’t watch it. Our popular culture caters to the lowest common denominator and it seems to get lower all the time. The few outlets that do in-depth reporting aren’t rewarded for it. I am very grateful they exist.

I was so tired of the OJ case. I never saw the point in discussing it. I think there should be a law against making a huge media circus out of court cases. So here’s this woman who was acquitted and there are people who heard about the case that want to KILL her and the jurors. That’s not good for society. We have rule of law, not mob rule.

OK, forgive me if someone else has already gone over this – because I didn’t get through more than three comments before it hit me:

How does *anyone* think this makes anyone safer? If you haven’t reported your kid missing, no one knows your kid is missing to arrest you for not having reported him or her missing soon enough. If you don’t report your kid missing for a week, this law doesn’t miraculously make those in charge of the world aware that your kid is missing after 24 hours so they can do a search sooner & hopefully find your kid alive. There isn’t any way this can possibly be twisted around to sound like it *might* make someone safer – it’s something addressed after the fact, and really, if you killed your kid & buried her in a swamp, making *not reporting her missing within 24 hours* a felony isn’t likely to appeal to your sense of lawfulness so that you report her missing sooner than a month after the fact.

Most of these kind of laws you can at least understand where people are coming from, thinking it might have changed a tragic course of events if only something like this had been in place, but really, this wouldn’t have changed a damn think about Caylee Anthony’s situation; it just would have been another charge tacked on for her mother.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/11/cayleys-law-crime-fighter-or-more-grief-for-mourning-parents-and-troubled-teens/?hpt=hp_c2

This article makes the same point as well.

pentamom: I was responding because I said that if someone suspects an adult is missing in foul play they should report it and would be a criminal if they didn’t report it. If a husband comes and goes regularly, then there would be no reason to suspect foul play when he is gone for a while. Whereas in my case, it would be. That is why I do think the law should have exact wording and not be vague because every family is different all people are different. However, if someone knowingly refuses to report something suspicious than they are guilty.

Kasia Your example about the child drowning doesn’t hold water (sorry for the pun). If a child drowns you are going to call 911. Someone will call 911. That notifies ambulances, police and fire rescue squads. So right there it is automatically taken care of. Now if you are some weirdo who won’t call 911 and won’t let your child receive medical care when they clearly need it, well then I guess you will have to go out of your way to notify the police. But with funeral homes or medical examiner coming to pick up the body, etc I am pretty sure that somehow some kind of authority will get notified.

The proposed law is what I call “barn door legislation”, because it’s like locking the barn door after the horse is long gone down the road.
Regarding Nancy Grace: not having cable TV I had never heard of her until she (or an actress playing her) appeared in “Boston Legal” (a.k.a. the “Denny Crane Show”). Then I saw her mentioned as a major “scaremonger” in “Free Range Kids: the book”. Finally, yesterday, Robert Rector, an “editor emeritus” of our local newspaper, really took Ms. Grace to task, citing a long history of questionable prosecution activity. To quote his column: “Take a zealous prosecutor, give her a television show and the freedom to hound a defendant without restrictions of due process, and you have Nancy Grace, an avenging angel wrapped in the flag of truth, or at least her version of it.” Then the columnist adds the key to the whole phenomenon: “The ratings for Headline News have soared as a result of Grace’s trial coverage.”

Oh, PS–I located the Robert Rector article mentioned by Bob Davis, here it is:

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_18446534

LRH

I submit that, rather than “amazing exceptions,” there just shouldn’t be a law. If it wasn’t necessary before Caylee, it wasn’t amazing after. That it would be considered necessary only now, after all of this time, over one isolated case, means that people are being too “case respondent,” that is, crafting a law that covers all scenarios just because it happened one-time in a high profile case that received a level of attention way out of balance vs what it really deserved. If we didn’t need such laws before, how do we all of a sudden supposedly need them now?

LRH

Is “Caylee’s Law” a bad idea?

All you have to do is look at the laws on the books that are named after dead children.

http://cfcoklahoma.org/New_Site/is-caylees-law-a-bad-idea

Answer: Very bad idea.

Dolly, suppose something that isn’t terribly rare: the neighbors are a childless couple who fight a lot. He yells a lot, she cries a lot. One day I stop seeing her around, and he says she’s staying with a dying friend or relative. Maybe true. Maybe she got fed up and found the strength to leave him, with no forwarding address thankyouverymuch. But, there’s that slight possibility that he offed her and hid the body. Considering that in the USA people are innocent until proven guilty, I decide to keep my mouth shut but just watch out of the corner of my eye for odd behavior. So am I a criminal?

SKL: I would keep my eye out since I really don’t know them and have no idea what is going on. Now if it was my best friend and she just vanished without a word to me, then yes, I would call the cops in that situation because I would not trust the husband if I really thought he was capable of doing something like that and I would think she say something to me before leaving or contact me at some point.

It is hard making laws that cover all situations that is why if the law passes I think the wording on it needs to be exact and not vague and make room for exceptions. However in general I feel its wrong to not report someone missing if they are believe to be truly missing and under suspicious circumstances. Just like that lady locally whose husband says she left him but her parents did not buy it and reported her missing. I think they did the right thing.

I mean come on! Does anyone actually think she is totally innocent and had nothing to do with her daughter’s death? I think this is just like OJ in that we ALL know she did it and they are as guilty as sin, but they get off on technicalities. It stinks and I can understand why the public is so upset about it. If she paid the price for the crime, everyone would be satisfied and stop talking about it.

@Hineata- The logic that by creating a new law, you can somehow correct a perceived injustice can go so wrong.
The investigation into the 11yo girl’s death determined that she died because she was riding alone. So, if someone was with her, would they be at fault because she didn’t follow the rules of NO STANDING and did something stupid? I guess it’s easier to make a new law than to tell grieving parents that the cause of death was because their child did something wrong.

Dolly, do you not yet understand that Casey, as Donna explains, could not have been charged under this law because her daughter was never missing? NO murderer could ever be charged under this law, because the murderer always knows exactly where the victim is?

If this law had been in effect, and she had reported her missing after the deadline, and been charged, the charges would have been dropped when she was charged with the murder, because someone cannot be charged with a crime that never occurred, no matter how much we hate her. And if Casey was murdered by her mother and was never actually missing, *there was no missing child not to report in a timely fashion,* therefore she could not have committed the crime of “failing to report.”

So besides the point that making emotionally driven laws because we just want someone to suffer is a bad idea generally, you should realize that even your emotional reaction could not possibly have been satisfied even had this law been in effect.

so, ok…dolly…you repeatedly refer to the “exceptions” that should somehow be written into this law. if an adult comes and goes a lot…thats an exception….but what is a lot? twice a week? 10 times? who’s to codify whats “a lot” before a spouse is guilty of “criminal non-reporting”?

as far as the teen on spring break…again we have an “I would think you would do X” scenario, wherein the only “right” way to handle it is….whatever you or your friends do/did.

again with the child drowning….” If a child drowns you are going to call 911. SOMEONE will call 911…” “right there it is automatically taken care of…”
except its not.
what if you’re at a swimming hole and dont have a phone?
“everyone has a phone…SOMEONE would have a phone…”
what if, like a friend of mine, when tragedy strikes you suffer an immediate break with reality and sit for 12 hours sobbing and holding the body of your baby?
should you be charged?
“of course not…we will write in an exception…”

how long does she get, dolly? how long does my screaming weeping friend get to have her psychotic break? does she have to be “evaluated” by someone to make sure her grief passes muster? to make SURE this broken woman is, in fact, broken?
“but casey anthony wasnt grief stricken!!!….”

THIS IS NOT ABOUT CASEY ANTHONY!!
its not about caylee anthony either.

this is about FEAR. and because we as a society no longer have the ability to whistle past the graveyard….
because we succumb to fear, we are CONDITIONED with fear everyday…it is our leash, our bane, our lord and master….when we feel fear SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!1111

AND THAT’S WRONG.

we are encouraged to fear because fear is profitable…we buy stuff to keep us “safe.”

we are encouraged to fear because fear makes us tractable…we willingly do whatever is currently deemed best to keep us “safe”.

“do it for the children”

we are encouraged to fear because fear is distracting….we pay inordinate amounts of attention to things like the anthony trial, and ignore whatever else we could be up in arms over…taxes, perhaps?war? corruption? we dont have the time or the energy. someone somewhere just gave a toddler a happy meal, damnit, and now they are on the Road To Obesity!
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!!

and when we see others who are not ruled by those fears we are encouraged to be angry….resentful…OFFENDED…

“how dare they, who do they think they ARE letting their children run all over like that, dont they know what could HAPPEN….”

“that pregnant woman is drinking WINE!!!”

“she didn’t even seem to CARE about all that processed sugar, she just gave him the Oreo!”

“and he was smoking! right where children could SEE him!! doesn’t he know they could DIE from that?!?”

and we as a populace are encouraged to COMPEL those without those fears to at least conform to OUR fear based actions…
we not only react to fear for ourselves, we react to fear for OTHERS….violently, if needs be. because to ignore fear, ignore risk, ignore the possible CONSEQUENCES of actions is…wrong?

“THEY MIGHT TAKE IT TOO FAR!!! DO STUPID OR WRONG THINGS!!!SOMEONE WILL GET HURT!!ITS WRONG!!!”

wrong?
really?
well….that’s how everyone acts.
If you see someone committing the sin of risk…..do you itch to go correct them? to go say “dude…your kid is down at spring break….don’t you know what could HAPPEN down there? shouldn’t you go get them, even if you have to drive all night, miss work, poss. lose your job….how could you even THINK about your job…your child’s LIFE is in DANGER!!!!11oneoneone!”

I suffer from severe anxiety. I lurk here because I aspire to be free range not just in my actions….but in my REACTIONS. because it gives me something to look up to, a guideline to follow, a means test for fear.
I have PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, stemming from an attack. its not just my conscious that’s ruled by fear, its my BRAIN. my body. my involuntary reactions. watch fireworks? ugh. with every loud noise I’m wound tighter and tighter, no matter how “safe” I know myself to be. ride a roller coaster? be in a crowd? hear anything loud/unexpected/creepily quiet/UNIDENTIFIABLE?
fear. physical visceral fear.

just about the only thing I DON’T fear is death.
I eat what I want, when I want. stress keeps me thin-ish, lol, the only thing its good for. I smoke cigarettes (in a small locked room with an outside venting fan away from all normal pple, so its ok) and I drink, as long as my husband is home to be the “designated adult” in case of any emergency.

I fight fear every single goddamn day.
and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and watch OTHER PEOPLE’S fear become law.

accidents happen. tragedy isn’t just for Shakespeare.
BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE FOR NO REASON….. and yes….sometimes those good people are the little ones.

and its horrible and wrong and wretched and THERE’S NOTHING THAT ANYONE CAN DO TO KEEP EVERYONE SAFE!!!!!

even in a padded enclosed box with no sharp edges, you could always run out of air….or go mad…..

this law is yet another attempt to put the world in that box.
as such, I am against it.

I agree with those who point out that, if someone has no qualms about being a murderer, they probably won’t worry all *that* much about not reporting a child missing/dead.

Selby, thanks for that breath of common sense. Emotions got incredibly distorted over this case. I haven’t followed it, but my Facebook feed is filled with folks who have, and have passionate opinions, and are busy leaving their porch lights on for Caylee, posting little poems about Caylee, and yes, posting this link about Caylee’s Law. I’m tired of hearing about this case as well.

Instead of focusing on a freakish case, what about the real outrages that go on all around us every day? What about sky-high dropout and illiteracy rates? Why not worry about something that will affect you? I highly doubt that Casey Anthony is going to come to any of our houses and kill our children. But an illiterate high-school dropout who turned to a life of crime after the schools failed him or her?

The Casey Anthony case should have remained a family tragedy and a matter for the justice system. Instead, it’s been turned into a three-ring-circus. I think what’s truly outrageous is all of the people profiting from the death of a little girl, either in ratings or in reputation. Whoever sponsored “Caylee’s Law” belongs in the same sordid attention-seeking category as Nancy Grace.

I also want to throw in my lot with the “why the heck is this one story a big deal” people.

It’s horrible, horrible, tragedy every time it happens.

And children die at the hands of their mothers (and I will go with those who say she probably was guilty) hundreds of times per year in this country. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

There was a story right here in my city about a woman who allowed her toddler to starve to death and then hid the body for weeks and tried to put it out with the trash, just a couple of months ago. (Had firefighters not been responding to a call next door and noticed something really funky about that old suitcase, no one would have ever known what happened.) I can pretty much guarantee you will not hear that story except from me, unless you Google it. It’s not “big news.” Caylee is. Go figure.

But precisely because it’s so horrible that it happens so often, how did this case EVER get so special?

Actually, I know the reason for that, I think. Same reason Laci Peterson was somehow unique as (you would think) the only woman murdered by her husband in the last hundred years.

Because whenever a person goes (supposedly) missing, it speaks to our deepest fears. When someone goes missing, we all think of the dread we have of a loved one being missing. I think at some level, this frightens us a lot more than the idea of a loved one dying or being murdered before our very eyes, because of the “unknownness.”

So all these stories start out as missing person stories, get splashed all over the headlines and airwaves because of that element, and then when it turns out it was just another domestic murder (which is actually a sadly COMMON situation), we’re hooked. Obviously Nancy Grace or anyone else isn’t going to DROP the story when it turns out that we know what happened, so we follow it through to the end, and somehow Caylee and Laci get some bizarrely unique status relative to all the other murdered children and wives in the world — and their murderers or suspected murderers become the worst criminals in recorded history, instead of the really pretty common types they are.

Murderers don’t deserve to have kids. I can’t believe anyone is arguing that. This is going on that I do believe she murdered her little girl.

well if dolly believes it, thats good enough for everyone.
out with her uterus!!!!
hell… she should be circumcised too, while we’re at it….why should she get to enjoy sex when she killed her baby!!
and cut out her tongue too…..her baby doesn’t get to taste food, why should she!!!!

Did any of you read the interviews from the jurors? The jurors said they believe she is guilty but could not convict due to lack of evidence. So no one is saying she is innocent. They are saying she got lucky.

I dont care if it was an interview with the pope! what kind of person are you to say that you can remove a persons body parts out of moral judgment?!?!?!?!?!? seriously, lady….what the hell is wrong with you?!?!?!?!? lets say she is guilty….and the prosecution didnt do a good enough job, or she was just too smart for them, or daddy knew someone….WHATEVER….you’re saying that without anything other then your own moral surety she should forcibly undergo SURGERY to remover her reproductive ORGANS?!?!?!?

dude…after THAT comment I hope YOU dont have kids!!!

dear god….now murderers, drug addicts, and insane pple are all the same thing!!!!!
:: headdesk ::
:: headdesk ::
:: headdesk ::
:: headdesk ::

dude….i….just….

holy crap.
she makes my brain hurt.

Mme: I do have kids.

So I guess you are all completely against any kind of child welfare laws then? Since you think its okay for anyone to have kids and raise them regardless of how many crimes they have committed, how mentally disturbed they are or how dangerous they are? Wow….that makes me just go Wow. So I guess if Jeffrey Dahmer were still alive, you would have no problem with his having several kids and raising them?

I am not talking about this specific case. I am talking in general. I do believe she did kill her daughter and in that case does not deserve to have more kids. I am not the one to make that call because I am not an elected official or lawmaker or law enforcement but I can have my own damn opinion about it. But, it sounds like most of you are arguing that everyone has a right to parent no matter what and that is just absurd. Do you really want kids raised by criminally insane people? By murderers? By rapists? By psychos?

By the way, I’m reasonably confident that a convicted child murderer is already unable to adopt a child. So your main concern that could be addressed with a sterilization law would be that the following person might get pregnant:

a woman who murdered her child (very rare);
who got out of prison before she was too old to have more kids (more rare);
who wanted to have kids, and found someone to hook up with before she got too old to have kids (hopefully more rare).

AND your argument assumes that such a woman would, after all the years of prison and somehow finding a man willing to create a life with her, she would put her next kid in danger.

OK, then using that logic, should we not prevent all murderers from ever again being in the situation that they were in when they murdered (keeping in mind that most murders are crimes of passion)? So none of them can ever cohabitate again if they killed their spouse/girlfriend, and a rapist isn’t even allowed a one-night stand. (Just chop it off! Even if it was statutory rape. Why take the risk?) And people guilty of vehicular homicide can never drive again. And anyone who held up a 7-11 is never allowed in a store again.

See, laws have to stand up to a test of logic. Not emotions.

Oh and Dolly, my cousin is being raised by a psycho mom. Far as I know, she isn’t criminally insane or whatever, but she’s not as good of a parent as I consider myself to be. Too bad! God decided to put her in charge of a soul. As it happens, I saw that soul yesterday (she’s 19 now) and it looks like her mom has done a pretty good job, in spite of her mental illness.

Thing is, sometimes we don’t get to decide (legally or otherwise) how things should be in other people’s lives. We’re just glad we get to decide what happens in our own lives, most of the time. I’d like to keep it that way.

Oh, and I’ve had people say I shouldn’t be a parent because I spank, because my kids are a different race than I am, because I am conservative, because I let them walk in the parking lot without holding onto them, because I put my heavier kid on a diet, etc., etc. I don’t think private citizens’ opinions should weigh in on whether or not I’m allowed to be a parent.

so wait….if i am against forced sterilization, i want dahmer to have kids? if im against forced sterilization, i want a criminally insane psychotic rapist to RAISE a child??

first of all…..if you are in JAIL you are not raising kids. so take any damn comparison wherein someone who was CONVICTED and either executed or IN JAIL and shove it sideways.

secondly, unless humans develop the skill of procreation via budding, are chosen by god to birth the second savior, or our prisons become co-ed- HAVING kids in jail isnt exactly on the table either.

that leaves “everyone has the right to parent” or to paraphrase….procreate.

and the answer is YES.
you may lose your right to keep that child in your custody, make decisions etc…via the courts, right or wrong…..but it is so goddamn fucking WRONG to suggest that you lose the right to PROCREATE that i shudder to think what kind of fucked up moral HELLHOLE you crawled out of to be able to suggest it….and so rationally too….

You can actually see the impact of these “tack on” laws in this case. The mother was found guilty of lying to the police.

Its a pretty scary thing that even when you are not under oath you can be found guilty for lying to the police. Is it a crime to say “I think I was going about 65 officer?” I guess in this case it was partially because they diverted resources to pursue false information which is more understandable. But still, lying to the police is sort of a natural reaction.

Donna:
“I find it fascinating that so many people who weren’t on the jury are so sure that Casey is guilty when the jury, who heard all the evidence, came to a very rapid decision otherwise.”

I know!! I have on occaision been a part of various commitee type things, and I’ve seen it take almost as long to decide on what type of PLATES to use, let alone what food is served, who is invited, what bank to use, etc.

the fact that 12 people all agreed on something so very quickly says to me that without all the hype and spin this would have been open n shut.
after all….
it only takes one person to hang a jury.

Not just 12, 17. 17 jurors listened to the evidence in this case. Only 12 deliberated but at least some of the alternates have come out to say they would have acquitted as well. 17 people who heard all the evidence, and none of the media hype because they were sequestered, found that there was not sufficient evidence. They did not find her innocent as a defendant doesn’t have to prove herself innocent. Juries decide whether the State proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she was guilty.

Seriously, you think it’s okay for your thirteen-year-old to disappear for seven hours? You were a little angry? If my over-six-foot-tall husband said he was going somewhere, never showed up there, didn’t call, didn’t answer the phone, and didn’t come home for seven hours, I’d have the cops looking for him! It’s one thing to let your kids have some responsibility, another when they violate your trust. Get some common sense, people.

“But, maybe the neighbor was scared of the man too. ”

I can think of a whole pile of reasons why someone wouldn’t do it — most of them bad, though not all of them, and none of them criminal. The criminal is the GUY WHO KILLED HER, not every possible person who didn’t do everything possible we can think of while we’re sitting here comfortably patting ourselves on the back for thinking we’re better than those people.

We want to make all these laws so really bad people who deliberately want to do really bad things won’t. But they STILL WILL. Yes, some common sense laws do prevent things, but a lot of this is just “helicopter parent” thinking applied to society instead of our own kids — if we just do everything right, and a little more than that just to be on the “safe side,” either nothing bad will happen, or at least WE won’t have to feel guilty if we supported the right laws and punished enough people for not being as “responsible” as WE would be.

someone mentioned further back, “what happens if I kick my child out of the house?” Interesting as for those of us with teens resisting house rules etc, sometimes that’s exactly what we think we may come to. But the rule makers could have us in trouble for doing something that back in the old days was a common tool used to get a serious message across to their kids. My son came home from school one day citing a friend of his who’d spent the night sleeping in a bush and came to school the next day early for a shower. “what kind of parent would do that?” my son asked. “A desperate one” we said… (I don’t know the reason for what the parents did, but sometimes it’s just a MYOB)
.

Marchmolly, on July 13, 2011 at 03:09 said:
Seriously, you think it’s okay for your thirteen-year-old to disappear for seven hours? You were a little angry?…. Get some common sense, people.

pentamom, on July 13, 2011 at 03:27 said:
Marchmolly — I think there’s a legitimate disagreement to be had over whether it’s okay not to worry about a 13 year old who isn’t where she’s supposed to be for seven hours

Sure, but we don’t know the exact situation, so can’t really judge.

I let my (then 15yo) go shopping in Seattle a couple of years ago. I told her I wanted to meet her back at the hotel “at suppertime”. We *generally* keep in touch every few hours on our cell phones when we are in foreign cities, but I don’t have any requirement that she checks in on schedule. During the day her phone battery died. I spent an anxious few hours wondering if “suppertime” meant 5pm like it does at home or 7pm like it had for the last few days, or ,,,

When I tell this story I occationally say that I hadn’t had contact with her in 8 or 9 hours and was worried, but really I wasn’t worried for 8 or 9 hours, and she wasn’t missing for 8 or 9 hours… or at all! She was just late back for supper… like I had been a million times when I was a kid… like you probably were more than once in your childhood too!

Dolly, you can tell us all day that you rock and you rule and you’re the best friend and nicest person in the world, but yet you can’t see that you are advocating sterilization for someone who has been found NOT GUILTY by a JURY OF HER PEERS in a COURT OF LAW?

Please, PLEASE take your egotism to some other website where they will worship you. Or start your own.

On a related note Texas Equusearch is suing Casey Anthony. They spent $112,000 while volunteering to search for Caylee. They were unable to help other families with members who were actually missing, because of their involvement in the search for Caylee.

Story http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8246363

Marchmolly, when I was 13 (or 8 for that matter) there was no “place I was supposed to be,” except during school hours. I was “supposed to be” wherever I wanted to be that was legal and hadn’t been specifically forbidden. I was not asked to inform my parents where I was going. It was not considered necessary, based on my parents’ observation of how responsible I was.

So no, I would not be afraid or upset if a free-range 13yo did not check back all day long, unless he had a specific instruction to do so. And no, that does not make me a criminal.

I should clarify my above comment – except during school hours OR after the legal curfew.

I used to think (TV again!) that you couldn’t report a missing person until they’d been missing at least 24 hours. But that doesn’t seem to apply to kids. A friend reported a son who ran off about an hour after he ran off (after looking for him and not finding him), and they had helicopters in the air within an hour looking for him. I do think 24 hours and “kid” may be too restrictive, especially if by kid they mean 17 year old and they define “missing” loosely. But once again it is a problem with discretion. Someone who doesn’t report a missing kid for days and days should be able to be prosecuted with current child neglect laws, I would think.

And, no, I certainly don’t want the law to have the power to sterilize anyone.

THANK YOU Sky! Actually I volunteered my own time and money when I did not have a lot to be a Big Sister to a disadvantaged little girl. They had plenty of food in the house because both her parents and her older sister were extremely obese. You cannot be starving and be that big. Now her older brother and my little sister. They were skinny as rails. She was always saying she was hungry when I came to pick her up. Why? Because according to her the parents ate all the food. I don’t doubt her story. She was not a lying child. So she was hungry alright but not for lack of government help. They had ample food stamps and the parents ate it all. The father was not even supposed to be eating that food since he was not married to the mother and was not a registered member of that household but he lived there and ate the kids food anyway.

But, yes, I do get outraged when children are abused and neglected and I volunteer my time and give my money constantly to help them.

Well struck Mr. Bachmann. Silly me, in a world with over 300 million people there cannot be that many malnourished children (accompanied by their obvious dead-beat parents, of course.) No way there could be so many. You’re right. Next time I comment on the number of any large crowd, I will take a personal census.

And I stand ashamed that I was caught unaware that our tax-dollar wastes are best highlighted by the least of our brethren. That none of the states (in financial peril all) hemorrhage (dare I say Billions…oh my) on laws and programs that have zippo to do with those who gratefully stand in Sky’s benevolent soup lines; polluting our very air with their felonious vapors.

I have the strangest craving for a cup of tea.

Pentamom, just to be clear, because I think you did get what I was saying, I am not proposing a law that makes it mandatory to report to the police when a bruised and bloody woman shows up at your door asking for help.

What I propose, is that common decency says that you call the police and help another human in need. I suspect that the neighbor feels really bad right now about the lack of action on their part.

The man, and the other adult women who were there helping him, are the ones guilty of the crime. Laws apparently did not stop him from doing what he did. It would seem that he feels that he is above the law.

And maybe Casey felt she was above the law, exempt or just plain scared of the law. I find it hard to find a reasonable explanation for how she acted. I hope that while in prison she was able to access counseling of some sort and she understands her errors.

For what its worth I have been an “evaluator” for more almost 40 years. In addition to crisis evaluations I do risk assessments for sexual predation, violence and arson, and I do trauma evaluations. I have done forensic testimony in abuse cases (sexual and physical). I have been face to face with many of your theoretical scenarios and others that are truly evil (father pouring lighter fluid and lighting the child on fire… seen 3 in my lifetime). You would be stunned by the horrendous behavior of human beings… that having been said MOST is over-stated and interventions lack common sense.

I prefer no particular laws and in that regard I am a libertarian. I believe in free range kids… that’s why I’m here… to support that concept. As Mark Twain said, “God protect me from do-gooders!”

Basically a law that requires a care giver who has complete responsibility for a totally dependent individual should be required to report the loss of that dependent is a good idea. It’s a risk benefit analysis… it is so rare that it will virtually never have an impact except in the rarest most horrendous cases.

Perhaps it should be on a sliding scale based on age… for example what if an infant went missing… how long should we wait before we see when the infant will return? A toddler… how long? Different than a first grader but sooner than an adolescent… maybe adolescents should be exempt. Much of this haranguing sounds adolescent and self centered. I’m not worried if “I” am going to be arrested… I’m worried that a lost child will be found ASAP.

I haven’t read through the 174 comments so I apologize if this has been mentioned already. About a month ago I heard a horrible story about a young girl falling to her death from a ferris wheel in Wildwood NJ. The story caught my attention because we used to vacation there when I was a teen. A few days ago I read a follow up story and of course the parents are angry and looking for someone to blame. It is so sad to see the blame reaction. I can’t imagine losing a child, but I would hope that I wouldn’t be the type to turn a freak accident into a blame game. The parents are mad that at 12 she was allowed to ride alone and now want to make it so children cannot be allowed on the ferris wheel by themselves! I can see telling a 3 year old they can’t ride alone, but a 12 year old!!! This is a ridiculous knee-jerk reaction to a horrific accident, that was just that, nothing more. As you have said before, people just can’t accept that accidents happen, surely there has to be a way to prevent all bad things from happening ever, after all it is 2011 right!!! Anyway I hope they do not change to rules and children continue to be able to ride amusement park rides without their mommies right next to them.

Dftt Well, I don’t know that there is any engaging needed. I stand by my point, I’m right–this case has received a level of attention disproportionate to what it really deserves. Caylee is no more important–and no less either–than any other child who was alleged to have been murdered by their parents.

LRH

“Caylee’s Law” would NOT be used to press charges against a parent whose child turned up late for dinner. It would be used against parents whose child turned up dead a month later without the parent/s ever alerting the authorities. According to Caylee’s Law, a missing child would need to be reported within 24 hours, so you would not be charged if your daughter was “missing” for 7.

Most parents do need such a law dictacting when to contact authorities and would not run into any trouble with this law. However, parents who are abusive, impaired, or otherwise dangerous to their child would now have an extra standard to be held accountable to. This will give the child/ren of such parents some extra protection. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Could we stop making this case about racism? The case was publicized because the search went on so long, and the family was so bizarre. Yes, she was cute and little. Yes, she was white. Why do I feel as if hate is being directed toward her posthumously for that reason? Racism goes both ways.

I don’t think people on this site are making the Anthony case about racism. I think the media attention was about racism.

People don’t hate Caylee for being white (who hates a dead child?). They hate the hype that surrounded the case because she was a white girl. They are wondering why a cute white girl is more “important” and “newsworthy” than any other type of child. I’m wondering that, and I *am* a white girl.

Sometimes anger and racism are hard to separate out. But I think in this situation, people are angry about the (conscious or dysconscious) racism of the media. They are not angry at Caylee for being white.

ANY of your reasons to oppose this is all based on FEAR! admit it! You all come on here preaching about how we can’t parent based on FEAR but yet here so many of you are rejecting a law designed for truly bad parents and immediately you put it down because you’re so afraid that you personally are going to be imprisoned for being mistaken for a bad parent after your child turns up okay and not missing…where is your logic? If Casey Anthony gets away with murder and it happens so often you don’t understand all the attention it’s received, do you *really* think you are going to prison for not having constant contact with your teen when they’re out when they’re healthy and alive when all is said & done?
For not wanting to conform to our cultures fearful parenting ideals, many of you sure seem to worry a lot about what other people think of you…isn’t one of the benefits of free-range parenting not weighing your family down with worry? Why is throwing away needless worry good enough for your childrens’ lives but not your own? Cause that’s when it gets really tough to face your own things holding you back from real peace. Everything comes down to your intention. I don’t think you can even feel what free really is until you grow and free yourself of all the fear that you let make your judgments for you not just your children. All you’ve done is taken your fear for your child and applied it to yourself…you all are the biggest bunch of whiny worriers I’ve ever heard!

Littlebird: Name calling aside I agree with you to a point. I have pointed out on this site before that I am not the least bit worried CPS or the police are going to show up at my door and try to take my kids or charge me with something. I know I don’t do anything wrong. I know I am a great citizen and person. I know everyone gives me a hard time for talking about myself positively but I am doing it to make a point. I have NOTHING to worry about from the government!!! It would be the joke of the century if anyone questioned my parenting or tried to arrest me!! I am such a goody goody.

I make the parenting decisions I want to make and I have zero worry about anyone calling CPS on me. I have to wonder are your parenting decisions really that great if you live in constant worry about CPS being called? I actually do a lot of free range stuff too like leave them outside in an unfenced yard for a few minutes. Riding low to the ground tricycles without helmets. When they are older they will walk to school alone and I have zero worry a neighbor might freak out and call CPS about it. Why? Because all the neighbors see me with my kids outside playing with my kids and interacting with them and they will see me training them how to walk to school alone before they actually do it. I really don’t worry about anything like that. Yet many people on this site worry nonstop that someone might call CPS on them! I don’t get it!

“”Caylee’s Law” would NOT be used to press charges against a parent whose child turned up late for dinner. It would be used against parents whose child turned up dead a month later without the parent/s ever alerting the authorities.”

You know this how? Maybe based on the wonderful track record of overzealous prosecutors NEVER applying a law more broadly than intended for the purpose of nailing someone for something when all else failed?

If a law says X, eventually it can and will be used to prosecute people for every possible instance of X, even if all the good-hearted people who supported it actually only meant for it to mean “X in certain circumstances that are obviously a problem.” Maybe not every time, but once is bad enough. Why not just write the law so it addresses the actual problem, or better yet, why not ask ourselves whether the law does anybody any real good even if perfectly written?

A timely manner? A deliciously vague and wonderfully supercharged pot of pathetic porridge.
How much more vague about age of said child, um? Are we still referring to teenagers as children? How divine, dahling!
I see somewhere in my crystal ball simply gazzillions of calls swamping the lines in the near future, as huge hordes of teenagers somehow slip the ship, poop the coop, and otherwise fade out of sight….while anxious caretakers try furiously to cover their butts…
o lord.
I dunno……..protection against bad parenting? Hmmmmm.
Might need a whole lotta new jails in the future….

This law is purely punitive. The Casey Anthony’s who allegedly murder their children are not impacted by the law. Since murder carries a much stiffer penalty than this law will, it’s ridiculous to believe that they will kill their child but still report her missing within 24 hours so as not to run afoul of the law. Same with crack heads or other bad parents who lose track of their children and don’t report them missing for days. The fact that there is another law is not going to make them responsible parents who obey the law. Parents who are decent and care about obeying the law already report their children missing when they are actually missing. The only people whose behavior this law will alter are those who report runways when they didn’t want to.

Further, this law doesn’t allow time travel. Sure the parent gets a felony, but the time has still passed, the child has still been missing for weeks and months, the trail is still cold, and the evidence is still gone.

Shawn, throwing away your children is already illegal. So is any deliberate or overtly neglectful act that puts your children in danger. We have endangerment laws.

It’s not as though we need this law either to protect children from harm, or to find a way to send a message that children are not to be harmed. We already have laws that do those things.

The only reason for “not passing this law” I’m suggesting is that no law, ever, should be passed if it doesn’t effectively either protect people, or punish people who would otherwise “get off” for doing something intolerable. IOW, the reason not to pass it is that there’s no reason to pass it — and that should be the standard. We should have a bias *against* passing more laws, not in favor of it.

Shawn, I am curious…did you find that other parents have in fact failed to report their kids missing? Yikes! I am hoping it is not prevalent but there are some terrible parents out there too…

And the short answer is “Yes”… I’ve seen a significant number of parents in the 11 and above category (a couple in the 9 – 10 range) that don’t report that their kids are ‘missing’ up to 2 weeks and more… a night or 2 is quite common in this group.

No but these incidents resulted in a law that doors need to be removed from discarded/abandoned refrigerators. Haven’t ever heard of another accidental death of suffocation or people arrested for not doing so… hide and seek is still legal…

That’s actually how it’s usually done… reported right away and looking upset that a family member is gone.

“You state that it would be OK if it punished someone “who would otherwise “get off” for doing something intolerable”. The case alluded to in this thread (Caylee Anthony) resulted in exactly that. Not reporting did not violate any law because she was found not guilty of child abuse/neglect.”

She didn’t get off because there was no law against what she is believed to have done. There are all kinds of laws against murder, abuse of a corpse, etc. She got off because she was found not guilty. And I fail to see how a law requiring her to report Caylee missing would have 1) done anything to protect Caylee since she had no qualms about committing the more serious crime or murder or 2) allowed her to be prosecuted since she couldn’t simultaneously be charged with killing a child, and failing to report a child who wasn’t, in the eyes of the law missing, because in the eyes of the law, Casey had killed her.

As for “laws keeping you alive” — that’s really a rather different meaning of laws and that’s called equivocation. I only meant that laws shouldn’t be passed without great consideration, because every law that’s passed *does* potentially take away someone’s freedom, so therefore there needs to be a good *positive* reason for any law, not just “it can’t hurt” kind of thinking. Not realizing that can take society on a dangerous path.

Jennybean, you’re exactly right. That’s what we’re trying to say. In fact, she *could not* have been charged under it, because the state could not have simultaneously maintained that:

1) She knew only that the child was missing and failed to report it and
2) She knew the child was not missing, but dead, because she’d killed her.

Both cannot be true, so the state cannot file both charges.

I’m neither a judge nor a lawyer so I don’t know how the “eyes of the law” see it. I do believe you can be charged for two different but overlapping charges simultaneously. The exception is “double jeopardy” which means you cannot be charged twice for the SAME crime. I have been an “expert witness” giving forensic evaluations, and have given “friend of the court” consultations. I am not unfamiliar with these circumstances.

Casey Anthony was acquitted of all charges including aggravated child abuse. She was not charged with neglect. The consequence for a supported allegation of child neglect (and often abuse) is that you are assigned a case manager / social worker and/or the child is removed from the home… so loss of your child is the punishment. Casey Anthony would have been charged with being guilty of a specific act… not reporting a missing child. This is the law that is requested… failure to report. If such a law was on the books and she hypothetically was found guilty of murder she still also could be found guilty of “failure to report”.

She was found guilty of lying to the police. Outrageous lies that hindered the investigation… this was not a crime of omission… it was an active attempt to prevent the body from being found. So it was actually more than failure to report it was a deliberate attempt to NOT report.

If you take the defenses own scenario we are to believe that the child died accidentally from drowning and that the grandfather covered it up and disposed of the body. This means the mother knew the child was dead and was an accomplice after the fact (if the child drowned while the grandfather was supposed to be looking after her) or was actively trying to protect herself and thus was a co-conspirator (if the child drowned while either she alone and/or also the grandfather also present were supposed to be supervising her). Whatever the scenario the mother knew the child was dead and did not help the police.

I am not at all emotional about this… I am coldly logical. “Caylee’s Law” would not have protected Caylee but the mother would have been found guilty of a criminal act if there was a law that made it a criminal act not to report. For that matter if the defense’s scenario is correct then the grandfather should be punished as well and would also be guilty of the same crime. There would be a reason to charge him for at least with something if he is the incestuous pedophile the defense implied.

I feel there is at least as much emotion clouding the judgment of those opposed as is being accused of the one’s in favor. The emotional reaction of the opposed seems grounded in the fear that somehow their parental rights are being threatened. I believe the only ones truly being threatened are folks who are lying psychopaths (and my profession allows me to use that term in a cold clinical sense not in a histrionic emotional sense).

Pentamom I am also a college professor and I teach philosophy (and logic is one of my courses) as well as psychology. What I was doing could narrowly be seen as equivocation but my point was that “laws” are not automatically bad. Consequently I was giving an example of scientific “laws” which have a beneficial effect and thus attempting to show that laws are sometimes good.

A more salient example might be the law that says we are supposed to stop at red lights. This law impedes the freedom of some for some period of time but contributes to general welfare and safe travel. It also allows a policeman who look away for a moment when you are going through a yellow light that you could not safely stop at and thus is the correct and legal thing to do, to look up and see you part way through an intersection where there is now a red light, to pull you over, ticket and fine you.

Everything has an up or a down, a good or a bad.

As I have said initially… we simply disagree…

“I do believe you can be charged for two different but overlapping charges simultaneously.”

Yes, different and overlapping, but not mutually logically exclusive, which is what “failure to report that you don’t know where your kid is” and “murdering your kid” are.

For example, you can’t be charged with both breaking and entering your neighbor’s house at 7:00 p.m., if you are also charged with assaulting somebody at a bar across town at 7:00. That is more obviously extreme, but actually no more logically exclusive, than being charged with “not reporting that you don’t know where your child is” and “having murdered your child, so you know there’s no lost child in question, and no lost child to report.” You can’t be charged with something you *could not have done* in light of having done some other thing you’re charged with. And that’s what this would be.

Donna… OK very interesting… please forgive me if you explained this before and I missed the details in such a long thread… mea culpa. This is why we need lawyers.

I was not suggesting that grandfather be charged as incestuous father… rather with failure to report a missing child. But if I understand the facts correctly if he KNEW the child was dead he could be charged with another crime but NOT failure to report because he knew the child was dead? And if he didn’t know and was in fact believing his daughter that the grand daughter was with a babysitter then the child was not technically “missing” as it applies to him? And finally is the statute of limitations for sexual abuse the same in every state? Are there some where (like murder I believe) there is no statute of limitations?

Thanks for taking the time for a thoughtful reply

Under the State’s theory of the case, grandpa can’t be charged because he had no responsibility for Caylee when she went missing. The failure to report has to be on someone responsible for the child, not every relative in the family. Further, they’d have to prove that he knew Caylee was missing, ie he didn’t believe the babysitter story.

Under the defense story, he can’t be charged for the same reason as Casey – he knew the child was dead and not missing.

All states will have different statute of limitations and they are complex for child molestation but most are similar – probably between 5 to 7 years. To my knowledge the only crime that carries no statute of limitations in any state is murder.

My brother had some personality issues as a kid/teen, and sometimes he would “run away” when life got too stressful. Sometimes he skipped school and hid up in the rafters of the garage. At least once, he was gone overnight – he slept in the woods. My parents did not report his absence to the police. They wanted to deal with him without getting the authorities involved. The authorities would have just made a bad situation worse.

This was not a matter of a “throwaway child.” Today, my brother would probably be diagnosed as having Aspergers, but then, he was simply an outcast in school, a “nutty professor” whose social and organizational skills were extremely primitive. He would reach boiling point and go hide from the world. Each time, he came back from “running away” and gave it another go. He’s now a professionally successful, married geek with a geeky but well-loved son. I don’t believe my parents were criminals for trying their best to help my brother find his way as a teen.

I frankly don’t trust the government authorities to do the right thing should I get them involved with my kid. My daughters have been through a couple of disruptions already – birthmom to foster mom, foster mom to me – and it would not benefit them in any way to be forcibly separated from me while the “authorities” decide whether, in their opinion, my kid wandered off because I was a sucky parent. I would call the cops if I believed my kids to be potentially in danger, but not if I just thought they were being rebellious / afraid and likely to come home once they had time to think clearly. Like most things involving my kids, I should have the right to decide, based on my individual kid’s needs and abilities, whether or not the situation calls for outside intervention.

Shawn, not sure why you seemed to take offense of my posting of the article about the woman in Oklahoma; I guess I should have made my point in posting it clearer.

There was quite a bit of discussion earlier in this thread about how this one death and this one poor mother had taken on epic proporations, to the point where one might think that Caylee was the only child ever murdered and Casey Anthony the only mother who was ever accused of murdering her child. The fact that a Casey-lookalike was run off the road (causing her car to roll multiple times) by someone who accused her of “killing babies” proved, at least to me, how gigantic this story became and how it inflamed so many people.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0717-chapman-20110717,0,7165196.column

It almost seems like this columnist has been reading our comments!

“I really don’t see how there can be a comparison here. This law isn’t to criminalize parents who lose track of their kids for a few hours. It’s to criminalize parents who lose track of their kids for a month.”

The specific proposal that the OP is criticizing says nothing like that. It says “in a timely fashion,” which means that it’s up to anyone’s discretion how long that is. I prefer laws that clearly indicate their intent, rather than relying on how I *think* someone *ought* to apply them.

thank you! several of my friends have posted the pettion on FB and I did not (nor am I going to) sign it. What Anthony did was wrong, yes. But like many of the other “commentors” here I do see danger in the Caylees Law. What one builds as a shield another can use as a weapon… or in this case what one builds as a weapon another can use as a weapon of mass destruction… years ago I allowed a family member to take my son (who needed a car seat) on a short errand, after 2 hours they were still not back, we could not get an answer on their cell phone, so we checked where they said they were going; they were not there…. my husband was furious. When they finally showed up a total of 3 hours had passed; half of that time my hub & I were in a panic. The fam mem. did not understand why we were so upset, during the following argument we found out that the car used was on the verge of breaking down, that they had done original errand & decided to run across town with a dead cell. I still do not agree w/ that persons actions or reasons for not contacting me w/ change of plans; they had my kid, I should’ve been given a heads-up. The biggest reason they chose not to come back/call & get my OK? was cause they didn’t want to be told my kid could not go. If Caylees Law had been around then I’m pretty sure my hubs would’ve used it against our family. FAMILY that loves our kids, loves us, has been our support system for 11 years…. I do not agree w/ that persons decision, but they learned & I forgave (not sure if my hubs has though) And I can honestly say that I do not fully trust them, yes they have spent time alone w/ my kids since then, but there will always be that crack in our relationship, that BUT….

oncefallendotcom said:
“This online petition is exactly the reason why the uneducated have no business writing justice policy.”

I think they (the uneducated) have no business writing any policy. Now if only we could apply this rule to Congress.

Support Caylee’s Law!