The Washington Post reports on a mother who gets a minimal consequence after forcing her children to take turns riding in the trunk of her car. Apparently, she didn’t want to shell out the extra dough to get a car big enough for her family to take a long road trip and of course, the courts brush off the children’s rights and safety in lieu of concern for not wearing a seatfelt. Classic!

A Stafford County woman was convicted yesterday of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for making her daughters take turns riding in the trunk of a cramped four-door sedan during a long summer road trip from Alabama to Loudoun County.

Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne dismissed a felony charge of cruelty to children against Cheryl Ann Schoonmaker-Brown. But he agreed with prosecutors that Schoonmaker-Brown, 38, endangered her children — ages 8 and 10 — when she put them in the trunk and allowed others to ride in the car with improperly fastened seat belts during a more than eight-hour journey July 1.

“If we were in Alabama, I wouldn’t hesitate to find the defendant guilty of a felony,” Horne said. “I think it’s very likely that a child could die from being in a closed trunk on a summer day in Alabama.”

Couldn’t a child die anywhere in the United States from being locked in a trunk? The last time I checked, a state’s blessing for forcing a child in a car trunk wasn’t predicated on which state you live in (or is it??). Perhaps locking a child in a car trunk is common place in Virginia.

But wait, it gets better…Here’s the mother’s reaction to her child’s suffering…

Schoonmaker-Brown laughed when her 8-year-old daughter began singing what she called the “I’m so hot song,” Cassandra said. When the girl emerged from the trunk bathed in sweat, cheeks flushed and stripped down to her underwear, Schoonmaker-Brown turned up the air conditioning, then allowed her 10-year-old to crawl into the trunk crammed with luggage, a laptop and a Boston terrier pup. Later, Schoonmaker-Brown stuffed a case of wine into the trunk along with her daughter after stopping at a winery, Cassandra said.

And the voice of reason, the arguement that children should be protected from this kind of abuse is dismissed by the judge. Yet another reason to support that all judges be held accountable for their actions.

Schoonmaker-Brown’s attorney, Eric Strom, successfully argued that his client’s actions did not merit the charges originally filed against her. He said the Stafford County airline worker had not acted willfully, adding that prosecutors had not presented proof that the children would have been harmed.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nicole Wittman tried to convince the judge otherwise.

“There is no justifiable excuse for putting a child in the trunk of a car, especially when you’re driving down the freeway,” Wittman said.

Isn’t this plain common sense?? Why have so many judges and American’s alike lost pure and simple common sense?

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