my friend's wrongfully accused

my friend rob put his 8 month daughter in her jolly jumper and she fell out of it. she was screaming so he took her to the hospital right away. they said that is was child abuse and neglect. they called child services and all of his medical rights were taken away. now the child is in state care and he can only see her two times a week. his girlfriend michele is in the military and he is a canadian on a visitors pass for the us. they came yesterday may 9th 2002 to arrest him. they had a warrant issued, yet this whole thing happened six months ago. they did not read him his rights. now he is sitting in jail waiting for a court appearence. it will be on monday may 11th 2002. i was wondering the rights that a canadian citizen has in the us if any and what should he plea. his lawyer wants him to plea guilty, and he will have to be shipped to canada. they have another child on the way. please help! any information you have will help dearly. thank you katrina

The hospital is required by the law to notify child services if anything happened to that child. It sounds to me that DHS is over-reacting too much.

Your friend should plead not guilty because he did not intend to do that.

Regards, Combat

I agree with Combat. You have to have criminal intent to commit certain crimes. However, certain offenses do not require the same mental state as others. You didn't say which state this was.

Negligence has a lower threshold of mental state, or mens rea, than intent does. If they think he was drunk and failed to secure the child into the jolly jumper (if seatbelts are required ) then he could be found guilty of neglect, even though he never intended to hurt the child in any way. Depends on the law in each state. I'd like to think that prosecutors in all states are ethically prohibited from taking cases they don't feel they can win in front of a jury!!