have been reading this

Duke Students for an Ethical Duke

Dunbarton, SC

My grandfather was born in Boston, but he grew up in Dunbarton, SC. Dunbarton no longer exists because the Federal government built a nuclear materials processing center there in 1950, at the Savannah River Site.

Crack babies

Johnson v. State, 602 So. 2d 1288 (Fla. 1992)

Jennifer Clarice Johnson was convicted under a Florida statute that made it unlawful to "deliver" a controlled substance to another person. During her first pregnancy, Johnson admitted to having ingested crack on the day night before her delivery. During her second pregnancy, she had a crack overdose having ingested $200 worth of crack cocaine and was hospitalized. The next month she admitted to having smoked crack when she was in labor. Johnson was convicted for having "delivered" crack to her baby through the umbilical cord after the baby was born but before the cord was severed.

Chief Justice Major B. Harding delivered the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court overturning the conviction, in part, because:

The Legislature considered and rejected a specific statutory provision authorizing criminal penalties against mothers for delivering drug-affected children who received transfer of an illegal drug derivative metabolized by the mother's body, in utero. In light of this express legislative statement, I conclude that the Legislature never intended for the general drug delivery statute to authorize prosecutions of those mothers who take illegal drugs close enough in time to childbirth that a doctor could testify that a tiny amount passed from mother to child in the few seconds before the umbilical cord was cut. Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson will undermine Florida's express policy of "keeping families intact" and could destroy the family by incarcerating the child's mother when alternative measures could protect the child and stabilize the family. Johnson, 1294.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy represented Johnson. Litigation director for the CRLP Lynn Paltrow said "It's a great victory for public health, for women and newborns and common sense." Tamar Lewin, Mother Cleared of Passing Drug to Babies, N.Y. Times, July 24, 1992.

1. "Keeping families intact"
2. "Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson...could destroy the family"
3. "A great victory for...newborns and common sense"

Well it doesn't make sense to me.

My case book offers this wisdom from Prof. Dorothy Roberts:

Prosecution of crack-addicted mothers diverts attention from social ills such as poverty, racism, and a misguided national health policy and implies instead that shamefully high Black infant death rates are caused by the bad acts of individual mothers. Punishing Durg Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1419, 1436 (1991). Reprinted in Kaplan, John, et al. Criminal Law: Cases and Materials. 5th ed. 2004. p. 130.

I see.

Today

was the first day back in classes...it made me really exhausted

but some fine words from Blackstone as cited in Proctor v. State 176 P. 771 (1918): "no temporal tribunal can search the heart, or fathom the intention of the mind"