Kansas father Seth Jackson was charged in the hot car death of his 10-month-old foster daughter on Wednesday. The prosecution entered a charge of first-degree murder and an alternative count of second-degree murder.
After the hearing, Jackson's defense attorney, John Stang,
told reporters from The Associated Press that prosecutors went too far, saying involuntary manslaughter would have been more appropriate, as his client left the child in the car unintentionally.
"Not minimizing the fact a child passed, but normally you look at first-degree murder in light of a more heinous type of death," said Stang.
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The baby girl's death, which occurred last Thursday as outside temperatures hovered above 90 degrees, is the eighteenth hot-car death this year.
CNN reported that there have been over 600 such cases since 1998 in the U.S.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said that the charge does not necessarily denote intentional murder, and that the first-degree murder charge was appropriate because the child died during an alleged felony, aggravated endangerment of a child.
Bennett differentiated the case from a widely publicized, ongoing case in Georgia where a father is charged with murder on suspicion that he intentionally left his 22-month-old boy to die in a car while he was at work.
"No one is alleging, it is not charged that he did this intentionally," Bennett said in describing the Kansas case. "We are not intimating, as authorities in Georgia have, there was some plot or anything like that. It is a different charging theory and a different charging authority in Kansas than what appears to be in Georgia."
Jackson, 29, and his partner, 26, have two adopted children, ages 5 and 7. In addition to the 10-month-old, they were also caring for three other foster children, ages 3, 5, and 18, at the time of the incident.
Police investigators confirmed the story Jackson, 29, related after he realized the child was left in the car and called 911. After picking up the girl from the babysitter around 4 p.m. in his gray Dodge Charger, Jackson left the girl in her car seat when they arrived home. He said that over two hours later, something on TV reminded him of the girl, and he rushed outside to find her unresponsive.
The child's maternal grandmother, Cindy Poe,
told NBC News the incident and murder charge "blows my mind."
She explained that, "He loved those kids and they loved him so much. I'm mad, but at the same time, accidents do happen. I'm sure he is beat down inside. It's hard to say what the charge should be."
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