In reversing a conviction and remanding for dismissal, the Iowa Supreme Court discussed what does and does not constitute child endangerment. To violate the child endangerment statute, a parent must knowingly act in a manner that creates a substantial risk to a minor child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or safety. A substantial risk requires the very real possibility of danger. The court emphasized the word “create.” In this case, leaving six children, ages ranging from 5 to 12, home alone, did not create a substantial risk to their safety.
The court noted that life is inherently risky, and no parent can shield a child from all risks. Virtually any conduct has the possibility of endangering a child’s life, including playing on climbing equipment from which they could fall, playing football, driving a child to school vs. allowing them to walk. Courts “must exercise special caution when deciding whether a parent has created a particular risk and …be subject to criminal liability… . A parent does not create a risk if that risk is part of the background risk of ordinary life. Rather, a risk is created by a parent when the parent’s behavior produces an identifiable risk that falls outside the range of risks that accompany ordinary life. Ordinarily, this means that a parent creates a risk when that risk is the product of behavior that is (1) independently unlawful, that is unlawful under a statute other than section 726.6; or (2) overtly abusive.”
Such would include causing a fire in the home by smoking illegal drugs, causing severe bruises by hitting a child with a broomstick, leaving the child in the care of a known abuser, eluding the police at over 20 mph over the speed limit while children were in the car, hitting a child very hard or multiple times, causing injuries, shooting a gun near a child’s head, pointing a gun at the child’s mother in the child’s presence, brandishing a knife near a child’s face, using drugs in a child’s presence. Ordinarily, parent-created risks are those risks that arise from illegal or overtly abusive behavior.
There can be cases where neither apply, but the behavior still must create an identifiable risk which falls clearly outside the risks of ordinary life. For example, driving young children in the bed of a truck full of improperly loaded and tied down tree limbs and brush with little protection at the back of the truck to prevent items from falling or being blown out the back (only a wooden plank) – it was foreseeable that the branches might slide or be blown off, taking the children with them out of the truck and falling to their deaths. Although children have long ridden in the back of pickup trucks, this situation was more egregious than simply children riding in the back of a pickup. There is a difference between ordinarily risky situations and extraordinary risk. Leaving a severely intoxicated teen who had fallen and hit his head alone at home can be child endangerment. This includes willfully depriving a child of necessary food, clothing, shelter, health care or supervision appropriate for the child’s age and which deprivation substantially harms the child – i.e. abandoning the child to fend for himself while knowing the child is unable to do so.
Here, no statute prohibited the defendant from leaving her children alone. No statute sets a minimum age at which children can be left home alone. The parent was not overtly abusive. No child was harmed. There was no identifiable risk that fell outside the range of risks that accompany ordinary life. There was no evidence that the mother’s actions created any extraordinary risk. There was no evidence showing that leaving the kids home was any riskier than driving with them to the store.
Ultimately, the child endangerment statute has both a subjective requirement, that is that the parent act knowingly, but it also has objective requirements, regardless of the parent’s subjective state of mind.