CREATORS
June 9, 2025
Every year in this country over 4,500 babies die of Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Children's Hospital of Philadelphia defines SIDS
as "the sudden and unexplained death of an infant under one year of
age." SIDS is one of the leading causes of death in babies from 1 month to
1 year of age. It seems to plague otherwise healthy infants, usually during
sleep time.
Several states have infant safe sleep laws. In Pennsylvania,
the legislature enacted a specific law requiring parents to follow the sleep
recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The law provides,
"Infants shall be placed in the sleeping position recommended by the
AAP." In 1992, the AAP recommended, "Infants should be placed in the
supine position for every sleep until the child reaches 1 year of age."
During a 2007 committee hearing on the proposed Pennsylvania
legislation, Eileen Carlins, the Director of Support and Education for SIDS of
Pennsylvania, told legislators, "Over and over in my job I keep hearing
the same thing, they didn't know, they didn't know."
In an effort to educate new parents, the law requires
hospitals, birthing centers and health care practitioners to provide
educational materials, then ask the parents to sign off on a certification that
they received the information.
Delaware, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Colorado have similar
laws, but Pennsylvania has taken it a step further. The state is prosecuting
parents for failure to provide safe sleep environments. There has been
prosecution of parents in other states like Virginia and Indiana for accidental
suffocations and "overlays" where a parent sleeps next to an infant
and rolls onto the infant, causing death by suffocation.
According to a recent article in Spotlight PA, a nonpartisan
investigative journalism website, two sets of Pennsylvania parents face felony
charges after police say their infants died while in "unsafe" sleep
positions.
While experts and family advocates agree babies should sleep
on their backs without anything in the crib, should simply failing to follow
the recommendations amount to murder-three or involuntary manslaughter?
In one case, according to newspaper reports, back in May of
last year, police in Lebanon County, Pa., responded to the Penn State Health
Hershey Medical Center for the death of a three-month-old infant. Police said
that the child's mother, Gina Strause, found the child unresponsive inside his
crib.
According to police documents, "(Gina) related she went
to get the child inside his crib to feed him and that was when she observed he
was cold to the touch and appeared blue and she immediately called 911 and
performed CPR until EMS arrived."
Police charged Strause, 40, and her husband, David, 42, with
endangering the welfare of children, involuntary manslaughter and recklessly
endangering another person. According to police, Strause said she placed the
child back in his crib between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. "on a 'pillow' and
he was placed on his stomach (prone)."
In a second case, 19-year-old Natalee Michele Rasmus is
facing murder charges for the death of her infant in Luzerne County,
Pennsylvania. Rasmus is charged with third-degree murder, involuntary
manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of her one-month-old daughter
in October of 2022.
An autopsy determined the infant's death was caused by
asphyxia due to mechanical compression.
Although parents in Pennsylvania are informed of safe sleep
environments — being provided a pamphlet and signing a certification may not be
enough, and certainly shouldn't be the basis for criminal charges.
An ongoing study by Johns Hopkins University is analyzing
the use of an infant sleep assessment tool and motivational interviewing to
enhance parent communication on safe sleep.
While the study is still recruiting participants,
researchers hypothesize it will improve effective communication on sleep
practices, reducing SIDS risk.
There is even research published in eBiomedicine that has
identified a potential biomarker for SIDS. Yet, parents devastated by the death
of an infant child face the wrath of the criminal justice system.
Nancy Maruyama, the executive director of Sudden Infant
Death Services of Illinois, a nonprofit organization that educates the public
about safe-sleep practices told Spotlight PA,
"To charge them criminally is a crime, because they
have already suffered the worst loss."
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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