Kevin Grasha

kgrasha@enquirer.com

The law doesn’t expect parents to be superhuman.

University of Dayton School of Law professor Lori Shaw made that point in an interview Thursday as she explained Ohio's child endangerment law.

People across the world have offered wildly varying opinions about the legal consequences they believe a mother should face after her 3-year-old son managed to breach the Cincinnati Zoo’s gorilla exhibit, resulting in the decision by zoo officials to shoot and kill a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla named Harambe.

Shaw offered this view:

Ohio law, she said, is designed to penalize people for being reckless, for being aware of a risk and making a conscious choice to disregard it.

“The law is really going after people who saw something was risky and said, ‘What the heck,’” Shaw said. “That’s a different thing than a mom who is distracted.”

Ohio courts, in fact, have said it’s not a crime for a caregiver to turn attention from one child for a moment to tend to another.

If such a result were possible, Hamilton County’s appeals court said in a key ruling, “undoubtedly the majority of parents in this county would be guilty of child endangering.”

“Parents or other child caregivers,” according to a Montgomery County appeals court ruling, “are not criminally liable for every error in judgment.”

In the Cincinnati Zoo case, city police have forwarded their investigation to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters without recommending charges.

The exact circumstances of how Michelle Gregg’s 3-year-old son was able Saturday to get through a 3-foot-tall barrier and go into the exhibit remain unknown. A witnesses said Gregg, who appeared to be with several children, briefly lost track of the boy. Gregg has not offered an explanation publicly.

Child endangerment is typically a misdemeanor crime punishable by up to six months in jail. It’s a felony if the person charged has a previous conviction or if the child suffered serious physical harm.

The law says no person who is the guardian of a child “shall create a substantial risk to the health and safety of the child.”

"Substantial risk" means there is a strong possibility the child could be hurt, in some way. The law talks about “heedless indifference to the consequences” and “perversely” disregarding a known risk.

That is a high standard. State appeals courts have said a mother who left her 9-year-old child in a locked car while she returned a gift and a mother who left her toddler unattended in a bathtub for a short time did not commit crimes.

Ric Simmons, a professor at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law who for many years oversaw students working as special prosecutors in Delaware County, said child endangerment cases often involved children who were left alone for hours or longer.

Losing track of a child at the zoo for a short time “just doesn’t seem to fit how this law is usually applied,” he said. “I understand the public call for something to be done and that people are understandably upset this whole thing occurred – I just don’t see how the blame can be placed on the parent legally.”

Last year, a woman who dropped her toddler into a Cleveland zoo's cheetah exhibit was charged with child endangering, She had dangled her 2-year-old son over the exhibit's railing and he fell about 10 feet. The cheetahs did not approach him. The woman ended up pleading no contest to trespassing.

Until Saturday, no one had ever gone into the Cincinnati Zoo's gorilla exhibit in its 38 years of existence.

“People always want to assume someone did something wrong,” University of Dayton's Shaw said. “Sometimes things come together in a perfect storm, and nobody did anything wrong. It just happened.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.