Mother Accused Of Pot-Related Child Abuse Vindicated: Hudson County Court Decision Reversed

West New York, NJ - A New Jersey Appellate court has reversed a trial court’s decision against a Hudson County mother accused of abusing and neglecting her eight-month-old son by allowing a friend to package marijuana in her home while her son was in the next room.

The Appellate court announced their decision in an unpublished opinion on Tuesday.

According to court records, in November of 2012, the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCF) received a call from the West New York Police Department alerting them about an incident involving a local resident.

West New York police told the DCF that they received a call that people were smoking marijuana in a resident’s apartment.

When police responded to the apartment, a woman – whose initials Patch is withholding for privacy reasons – answered the door and allegedly appeared to be “under the influence.”

Police allegedly saw the woman’s friend “bagging” an unspecified amount of marijuana at the time, according to court records.

In addition to the mother and her male friend, the father of the boy was home at the time. The child was asleep in another room in the apartment when police arrived, court records state.

Police arrested both parents and released them a few hours later, court records state.

A DCF representative visited the apartment five hours after the arrest, and interviewed both parents. According to the representative, the mother did not appear to be under the influence at the time and denied that she had smoked marijuana that day.

The DCF representative later stated in court that during her home visit, “the baby appeared to be healthy, clean and well cared for, and that the house was clean and appropriate for a child.”

During a court hearing, the DCF did not call any witnesses from the West New York Police Department, but over the mother’s objections, allowed three DCF documents into evidence that supported the officers’ versions of events.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court found that both parents had put the child at risk for harm by allowing marijuana to be packaged in the mother’s home for the purpose of distribution.

Specifically, the court found that selling drugs was a “dangerous activity because a drug dealer may have a gun and fight with the police,” and that “other things could have gone wrong.”

The mother chose to appeal the trial court’s decision, which an Appellate court reversed on Tuesday.

“Here, there is no evidence the baby suffered any actual harm and so the issue is whether the mother placed the baby in imminent danger or at a substantial risk of harm in the manner found by the trial court,” the two-judge panel wrote. “A preliminary question is whether Angel was packaging or wrapping the marijuana for the purpose of distribution. In our view, the record fails to substantiate that he was, and the trial court’s conclusion to the contrary was based upon unsupported surmise and incompetent evidence.”

The judges added:

“The trial court’s assumption that [the mother’s friend] was a drug-dealer and engaging in drug distribution activities in her home was not supported by competent evidence. Further, there was no evidence [her friend] had a gun or conducted himself in a manner that placed the child at risk for harm when the police came to the mother’s home.”

A trial court also returned a similar verdict against the boy’s father but he did not appeal the decision, according to the Appellate opinion.

See the full court opinion here.

File photo via flickr