JOHN BRUMMETT: Where we go from here after Wade Naramore verdict

Wade Naramore's case exposed the best and worst of American culture, politics and law.

The best was that a jury of regular people in Garland County stepped up to its duty and got it right.

The worst was the malignant eruption on the Internet and in man-on-the-street interviews after Naramore's acquittal in causing his infant boy's death by forgetting that the child was in the back seat of a hot car.


The eruption spewed the all-too-prevalent ignorance, meanness and irrational resentment that form a cancer on contemporary American society.

People are mad. They are intolerant. They assume the worst of their institutions. They want people in office brought down. And often they are unthinking, ill-informed and wrong.

The damage their instinctive distrust causes to the essential concepts of self-governance and law and order is dangerous.

Time and again, people cried that Naramore had been given special treatment because he was a circuit judge. They said he was walking free only because of insider favors provided through the corrupt connections of the powerful.

They said a regular guy in the same situation would be in the jailhouse for sure.

Actually, Naramore should never have been charged and might not have been except for the political pressure from the very people who were complaining.

Persons typically aren't charged and convicted on the facts of Naramore's case. That's because simple forgetfulness is not a matter of criminal intent.

Here's the relevant state statutory wording on proving negligence in a criminal case: "The state must show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant should have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the death would occur."

Had Naramore arrived at work that day, looked in the back seat and seen his infant, then decided he was going to be in the office for only a few minutes and that the child would be all right for those few minutes--and if the child had then died as a result--then Naramore would have been guilty of an unjustifiable risk and a criminal act, of negligence under the statute.

Or let's say Naramore had been drinking. His negligence would have been his decision to drink and his action of drinking. That would have enhanced the risk.

But simply to have forgotten entirely--to have had it escape his preoccupied mind--that his silent and unseen baby was in the back seat ... that's neither an action nor a decision. It's the full absence of awareness. By its very definition, forgetting is being unaware.

Someone could sue Naramore under civil law. The burden of proof is less than for criminal negligence. But that would have to be his wife, the baby's mother, who doesn't blame him.

So why in the world should a man on the sidewalk blame him?

A man on a Hot Springs sidewalk told a television reporter that Naramore would forever be looked upon by all who come across him as a man who killed his baby and got away with it because of who he was.

First of all, the person in any sidewalk encounter who is more keenly and incessantly and eternally burdened by the death of that baby, and by the cause of that death ... that would be the judge.

Second, these supposed powerful insiders who let the judge go free ... those are what we call jurors. Or friends and neighbors.

They're everyday people whose names were randomly drawn to go to the courthouse and sacrifice their time to give their fellow man a fair trial under the law.

A prevailing question now is whether Naramore can or should remain on the bench where juvenile cases are among his duties.

I'm advised that he is an excellent judge, especially in juvenile matters, and that many of his legal colleagues want him to continue to serve.

But I wouldn't think he'd want to stay on to get confronted with the sad misfortunes of innocent children.

More than that, the perception of integrity in our system of justice is as important as actual integrity. It will risk a fracture in Garland County juvenile justice if people who think wrongly that Naramore ought to be in jail over the death of his own child are brought resentfully before him for a decision about their children.

It wouldn't be fair if he departed the bench. But it might be wise.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 08/23/2016

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