Background
Rhonda Jewell, a nanny, picked up ten-month-old A.P. and drove to another family’s home, where she was caring for three children. Jewell entered the home and forgot that A.P. remained strapped into a car seat in her vehicle. About five hours later, A.P. was found dead from hyperthermia.
A jury acquitted Jewell of aggravated manslaughter by culpable negligence but convicted her of third-degree felony murder and felony leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle causing great bodily harm. She received consecutive sentences totaling seventeen years. The trial court rejected her proposed instruction that the vehicle offense required proof that she knowingly, willfully, and consciously left the child unattended.
The Court’s Holding
The First District held that section 316.6135(4), Florida Statutes, requires proof that the defendant knowingly or consciously left the child unattended. Although the statute does not expressly state a mental-state requirement, the court applied the presumption favoring mens rea and found no clear legislative intent to create a strict-liability felony carrying substantial imprisonment.
Because knowledge was the central disputed issue, the standard jury instruction improperly allowed conviction without proof that Jewell acted knowingly and eliminated her defense that she had forgotten A.P. The court reversed the vehicle-offense conviction and remanded for a new trial on that count with a proper instruction. It also reversed the third-degree felony-murder conviction because that charge depended on the reversed predicate felony and, independently, could not rest on an unenumerated strict-liability felony lacking any intent requirement. The court affirmed the rejection of Jewell’s constitutional challenge to trial by a six-person jury because she was not tried for a capital offense.
Key Takeaways
- Florida’s felony offense for leaving a young child unattended in a vehicle requires proof that the caregiver knowingly, consciously, or voluntarily left the child there.
- A jury instruction omitting that knowledge element is reversible error when it reduces the State’s burden and defeats the defendant’s principal defense.
- Third-degree felony murder cannot be sustained on an unenumerated predicate felony that requires no proof of intent; Jewell may be retried on the unattended-child count but not on the reversed felony-murder theory described by the court.
Why It Matters
The decision prevents section 316.6135(4) from operating as a strict-liability felony against caregivers who unknowingly leave children in vehicles. Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the initial act of leaving the child unattended was knowing or conscious, rather than relying only on the child’s presence in the vehicle and the resulting injury.
The ruling also reinforces that felony-murder liability must derive from the intent required by a valid predicate felony. Chief Judge Osterhaus dissented as to the unattended-child conviction, concluding that the statutory text and legislative history showed an intentional decision to punish forgetful caregivers without requiring proof of knowledge.