The Virginia Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of Ashley Jennifer White, ruling the Pulaski County mother should not be held criminally responsible for the 2015 septic tank drowning of Noah Thomas, her 5-year-old son...
White was charged with two counts of child abuse and neglect for the time she took Paul Thomas to work. She was also charged with one count of child abuse and neglect leading to injury, a more serious offense, for the time she was asleep and Noah died...
On appeal, Kelsey Bulger, White’s attorney, argued only against the conviction for the more serious child abuse and neglect leading to injury charge. She did not appeal the two other convictions for the time White left her children home alone to drive Paul Thomas to work. Bulger said there was just not enough evidence that Noah’s death, while terrible, resulted from abuse or neglect...
Judge William Petty wrote in the majority opinion that affirming the conviction would mean requiring parents to search out potential dangers and continuously supervise their children.
If they didn’t, “a parent could be subject to a felony conviction if he or she failed to recognize the danger posed by the unsecured tank cover, the unlatched gate, the rotted board, the unfenced pond, or any other hazard that, in hindsight, could have been corrected,” Petty wrote in the opinion published Tuesday. “Here, the evidence was insufficient to show that White left her son unsupervised with ‘the knowledge and consciousness that injury would result.’ ”
The decision wasn’t unanimous, as Judge Rossie Alston wrote a dissenting opinion arguing White was aware of the danger and was criminally culpable.