Child Endangerment - More Women Charged With Failure to Protect Their
Kinds From Violence...
Mother's Prosecuted, Punished for What They Didn't Do; Failure to Prevent
Children's Deaths Brings Penalties...
Byline: Rochelle Sharpe
When California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied parole to a battered woman
last week, he underscored a message that courts and prosecutors are increasingly
giving mothers - They can be PROSECUTED for MURDER and IMPRISONED if they FAIL
to PREVENT their CHILDREN from being KILLED.
Linda Lee Smith, 52, has spent 24 years in prison
in the murder of her 2 year-old daughter, Amy. Although the parole board
has declared her suitable for release six (6) times since 1989, the state's
governors have decided otherwise.
Smith was convicted of second-degree murder in San Luis Obispo County in 1980
and sentenced to 15 years to life after she did not stop her boyfriend
from fatally beating Amy. Whether Smith participated in Amy's abuse was
hotly disputed at her trial. The prosecution argued that by not
aggressively intervening, she condoned the violence.
That Smith may have been a VICTIM of
Domestic Violence was NO DEFENSE, Schwarzenegger
said. He said in his May 18th letter denying parole that Smith
still poses "an unreasonable threat to public
safety."
Smith's situation is not unique. Legal scholars and court dockets across
the nation suggests that during the past two (2) decades, mothers increasingly
have been blamed - and prosecuted - for not protection their children from harm.
That includes women who have been victims of domestic violence or who have used
drugs while they were pregnant. "there's the sense of a noose being
tightened," says Michelle Oberman, a Santa Clara University law professor and
co-author of the book, Mothers Who Kill Their Children.
"We want to try to find some way to think we're protecting children," says
Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the ACLU in Illinois. Fixing
social problems is too complicated, he says. "Blaming the mother is the
easy way out."
Some Prosecutors say women merely are being held to the same standards as men.
"If we're not going to hold the mother accountable, then who's going to be
responsible for protecting that child?" says Wendy Macfarlane, a deputy district
attorney in Ventura County, California.
It is unclear precisely how many mothers are being prosecuted and convicted of
failing to protect their children each year. They are charged under a
complex web of state laws, which are enforced differently in various
jurisdictions.
Oberman and other legal scholars say there is no doubt that prosecutions and
convictions of mothers in the death of their children is on the rise.
Anecdotal evidence from court dockets supports such a conclusion.
Mary Becker, an Illinois attorney involved in a protection case, says mothers
are being treated differently under the law because they are assumed to be a
child's natural protector. Fathers rarely are charged, she says.
In 1992, Illinois became the first state to consider parents accomplices to
first-degree murder if they don't protect their children. That's when an
appellate court upheld the conviction of Kimberly Novy of Shiloh, Ill., saying
that although she'd been battered by her husband and may not have caused her
stepson's fatal injuries, her actions- and inactions - made her responsible for
his murder. She is serving 30 years.
The following year Illinois prosecuted Kathy Cecil of Wood River for the
first-degree murder of her 2 year-old son, Michael. She didn't participate
in his fatal beating and had been repeatedly punched, choked and raped by her
lover for months. Cecil, now 31, was sentenced to 35 years in jail.
Battered women don't get much sympathy in many of these cases. Some
prosecutors say abuse of the mother is irrelevant. "That's not an excuse
for standing by and letting someone beat your child to death," says Terry
Patton, the state's attorney in Henry County, Ill.
Advocates of battered women say it's not that simple. These women may be
unable to help because if a husband or boyfriend is beating a child, they
probably are beating the mother, too.
That was happening in Linda Lee Smith's case, her surviving daughter, Bethany
McDermott, said in an interview last week.
McDermott said her mother did not intervene in Amy's beating because she was
paralyzed with fear. She said Smith had been
BATTERED and SEXUALLY TORTURED for months by her boyfriend, David Foster, who
was convicted of second-degree murder and is still in prison. Her mother
had been SEVERELY BEATEN when she TRIED to STOP Foster from harming McDermott,
then 3, a few weeks earlier. "Standing back and not doing anything was
horrible," said McDermott, 29. "But such a harsh punishment wasn't the
right answer."
Copyright 2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA Today
May 25, 2007 Chase Edition
Update on Deborah Peagler
Mr. Cooley: It's time to let this woman goeborah Peagler:
June 1, 2008
Twenty-five years after a Los Angeles prosecutor admitted that the
key witness against her was a liar, and three years after L.A. County Dist.
Atty. Steve Cooley agreed to a deal that would have led to her release,
Deborah Peagler is still in prison for the 1982 murder of a pimp who
repeatedly beat and sexually assaulted her.
Cooley, who in 2005 had a sudden change of heart about Peagler's release, is
fighting to keep her locked up at the state prison in Chowchilla despite a
2002 law allowing reconsideration of cases involving battered women.
Peagler, in a telephone interview last week, told me Cooley's flip-flop was
devastating. "I was prepared to leave here, emotionally and mentally.
I was gone. I was no longer a prisoner," said the 48-year-old.
Then came word that Cooley had changed his mind after some members of his
staff objected to a release. "I was shocked, numb, so disappointed once
again. I still have hope. However, I don't have any faith in the system I'm
in."
I was asked to look into the Peagler case not by a bleeding heart but by
Sean Walsh, a Republican political consultant who works at Bingham
McCutchen, a corporate law firm whose senior members include former
California Gov. Pete Wilson.
Two of the firm's lawyers, Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran, have represented
Peagler free for six years, trying to win her release. They believe she was
guilty of voluntary manslaughter, for which she probably would have served
several years and been released many years ago.
"This is about hubris and ego," Costa argued. She and Safran accuse Cooley
and his staff of having fought Peagler's release to quell an internal
dispute about the case, to keep up the appearance that the D.A.'s office
made no mistakes in her prosecution and to avoid civil liability.
Nonsense, says the D.A.'s office, arguing that Peagler committed a
premeditated murder, possibly to collect on a life insurance policy, and
that Cooley and a senior staffer didn't know all the details of the case
when they agreed at a 2005 meeting to support her release.
In 2005, the attorneys met with Cooley and then-Chief Deputy Dist. Atty.
Curt Livesay, arguing their case and laying out evidence of Peagler's abuse.
Shortly thereafter, they received a letter from Cooley and Livesay that all
but agreed to set her free.
"This office would be willing to offer a plea to one count of voluntary
manslaughter . . . which most accurately describes the defendant's criminal
conduct" and "serves the interests of justice."
So why did Cooley renege?
A spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons, said Cooley can't discuss the case because he
could be called to testify when Peagler's petition for release is heard.
Cooley's office is appealing a decision last month in which a judge removed
the D.A.'s office from the case and sent it over to the state attorney
general's office, arguing that prosecutors could not fairly cross-examine
their own boss.
But I did meet with prosecutors Lael Rubin and Laura Jane Kessner, who
argued that Peagler is a hardened and conniving killer who has made
contradictory statements about her role in the murder and is exactly where
she belongs.
As they see it, she planned the murder, she cashed the $17,000 insurance
policy and she is now exaggerating the abuse she suffered as a way to get
out of prison. Even if she was abused, they say, she still should have been
charged with first-degree murder rather than manslaughter because she was
not living with Wilson and was not under imminent threat.
Cooley and Livesay would not have agreed to the deal, they said, if they had
been presented with all the facts of the case.
I'm not sure what's worse: that Cooley and his chief deputy would offer a
get-out-of-jail deal without doing any homework or that they'd be
unprofessional enough to withdraw it without a full explanation for their
ineptitude, especially after getting Peagler's hopes up.
And though Rubin and Kessner may doubt the extent of the abuse suffered by
Peagler, there was little doubt by the state parole board last November. A
senior investigator interviewed multiple witnesses who told of severe
physical and psychological abuse of Peagler by Wilson and concluded that
"battering was a causative factor" in the murder.
The same report found "no proof" that Peagler "conspired to have him
killed."
As for the insurance policy, Peagler said a friend was selling policies all
over South Los Angeles. She said she missed the payments and forgot the
policy even existed until she got the money, which she used in part to pay
for Wilson's funeral.
Peagler's attorneys argue that contrary to Rubin's claim that there was no
imminent threat, the abuse continued almost until the day Wilson was killed.
By phone, I asked Peagler why she never called police.
Because he'd hurt her even worse, she said. Besides, she'd seen her
stepfather pummel her mother, and calling the police didn't help.
Why did she speak up about the abuse only in recent years?
"Shame and embarrassment," she said, and a sick love of her tormentor.
She's heard countless similar stories from battered women in prison, she
said, and she's well aware that among California prosecutors, Cooley is
notoriously reluctant to cut abuse victims a break.
Peagler, who was no angel as a young woman, makes no claim of innocence. She
said she considers herself responsible for Wilson's death.
"But I never, ever sat down and plotted or planned his demise," she told me.
"I thought they were going to, like, beat him up and make him leave me
alone."
As I was saying, a key witness was a liar, she had no trial, the D.A. agreed
to serve justice three years ago, and a woman repeatedly abused by a
pimp is still locked up 25 years after his murder.
It's time to let her go.
Crusade for justice: 2 attorneys fight to free
Deborah Peagler
Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Walnut Creek land use attorneys Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran have
never
had a client in prison, never had a client plead guilty, never
worked on a
domestic abuse case.
But for five years, the two attorneys have been on a
relentless
crusade to free Deborah Peagler, incarcerated for 24 years
in
connection with the death of her common-law spouse.
To them, Peagler's case is a clear-cut matter of justice.
After years of building their pro bono case, the appeal is on the
brink of a critical breakthrough. In July, the state Court of Appeal
issued an important ruling in
their favor. This month, the state
attorney general, who is opposing them, is filing a response.
"If I were ever in trouble, I'd want them for my lawyers," says
Olivia Wang,
head of the
California Habeas Project, a
San Francisco
nonprofit that works to
win freedom for battered women.
Five years ago, Wang asked for the help of Costa and Safran's law
firm, Bingham McCutchen. The firm agreed to represent Peagler on a
pro bono basis.
At the start, Costa and Safran thought the case would take, at most,
six months and cost their firm perhaps $5,000 in time and resources.
Five years later, the tab now stands at $250,000.
"If we don't win, if I have to stay in prison, my life is still
enriched because of Nadia and Joshua," says Peagler, 47, in a
telephone interview from the Central California Women's Facility in
Chowchilla. "It is so hard for me to put into
words what they mean to
me. Nadia has such a sweet, kind spirit. I know she truly cares about
me and that means the world to me.
"So does Joshua. I'm an older black woman. And here I got a
wonderful, constantly compassionate Jewish attorney. I haven't had a
healthy relationship with a man my entire life. But I would look at
Joshua, his face, his eyes, and he never made me feel like I was less
than him."
Peagler was 15, a teenage mother in
Los Angeles, when she met Oliver
Wilson, a man who was a pimp and a drug dealer.
They had a child together. But over the course of six years, say
court records,
Peagler was subjected to
extreme physical and
emotional abuse. According to witnesses, Wilson would beat Peagler
with a bullwhip, prostitute her, force her to perform oral sex in
front of his friends, put hot ashes on her hands, make her eat his
feces. When she said she'd leave, he threatened to kill her.
On May 27, 1982, she asked him to drive her to a park. Waiting in
ambush were two friends of her mother - neighborhood gang members
who
killed him. The prosecution maintained that Peagler hired the men,
wanting to collect Wilson's insurance proceeds. Peagler's defense,
according to court records, said Peagler "never talked to (the
killers) about killing Oliver, nor did she promise them any money."
She used about half the $17,000 policy on the funeral and gave most
of the rest away, the records said.
According to her petition, the
Los Angeles district attorney decided
there was not enough evidence in Peagler's case to warrant the death
penalty. Yet prosecutors told Peagler she could get a death sentence.
To avoid it, Peagler pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was
sentenced to 25 years to life.
Costa and Safran are petitioning for her release on numerous grounds:
Peagler's guilty plea was coerced, false evidence was introduced
against her, and
the original
prosecution would have differed had
there been expert testimony on battering.
They say the district attorney reneged
on a deal for Peagler to plead
to a single count of voluntary manslaughter, be given credit for time
served and be released. "You presented
significant issues and
evidence which were unknown or unavailable at the time of trial,"
said the agreement, noting it "serves the interests of justice."
But Costa and Safran say the deal apparently caused an internal
disagreement, and the offer was dropped.
On July 25, the Second District Court of
Appeal issued an order
finding good cause for Peagler's plea conviction to be overturned.
The court ordered the attorney general to respond.
The district attorney's office declined comment. The attorney
general's office did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Bobby Buechler, a private investigator in
Berkeley who has worked
with Safran and Costa on the case for more than three years, said the
lawyers are on a quest for justice. "That is their ultimate and
primary focus."
..."Batterers don't come in one size. Abusive relationships have many
sides," she says. "We were stuck in a cycle of violence - we wanted
it to stop but didn't know how."
..."There is a perception, even today, that domestic violence is
something that happens to other people," says Costa, who is happily
married to a businessman and the mother of a young son. "But domestic
violence affects people of all races, all social classes."
For more about Deborah Peagler's case, go to
freedebbie.org.
E-mail Elizabeth Fernandez at
efernandez@sfchroni cle.com.
For the Complete Story Click on the Link Below:
http://sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2007/
09/09/BALERSQ8G. DTL
Fighting on Behalf of Women Who Kill Their Abusers
Fighting on Behalf of Abused Women
Incarcerated as a Direct Result of Domestic Violence