SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS CONVICTION OF METH-USING DAD

DES MOINES -- The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of a
man whose 1-year-old died after he left her alone in a bathtub while he
slept off a methamphetamine high.

David Petithory, 25, of Des Moines, was found guilty of involuntary
manslaughter, child endangerment, neglect of a dependent person and
domestic abuse assault causing bodily injury in the death of his daughter
Brooklin.

The Supreme Court said that parents can commit a crime when they expose
their children to a risk, even if its the parents that pose the danger.

"The dangers of leaving one's children in the custody of actively using
methamphetamine addicts cannot be denied," the court said. "No parent
should leave his small children in the care of a meth addict -- the hazards
are too great."

That danger exists even when the person giving the care is the parent, the
high court said.

Court records said that on the night that Petithory and the child's mother
celebrated the child's first birthday, he stayed up most of the night
smoking meth and playing video games. Sleeping most of the next day, he
awoke in the afternoon and decided to his Brooklin a bath.

After placing the child in the bathtub, Petithory fell asleep on a stairway
outside the room. He was awakened by the screams of his 3-year-old daughter
K.C. and found Brooklin face down in the water.

She suffered irreversible brain damage and died more than a month later on
March 23, 2003.

At trial, Petithory defended himself by saying he sought to isolate his
children from his drug abuse.

"He maintains he was a careful drug abuser, smoking it only in the basement
where his children were not allowed," the court noted. "It remains however
that both parents handled and consumed the illegal drug in the very house
where the girls resided."

The youngster's older sister witnessed the drowning.

"We have long recognized the dangers and hazards of leaving one's children
in the custody of chronic drug abusers," the court said. "Experience sadly
teaches us that any hope that no parent would leave his children in the
care of a meth addict is misplaced. The law, however, sets a standard of
conduct for parents and rightly mandates that no parent should do so."

There's no distinction to be drawn when the meth addict a parent entrusts
his children to is the parent himself, the court said.

"It does not matter that part of the danger to which Petithory exposed the
children was himself," the court said. "The statute forbids a parent from
exposing a child to danger, it does not distinguish among the sources of
danger."