U.S. Supreme Court won't rehear McKnight case

October 18, 2003

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rehear the case of South Carolinian Regina McKnight, now serving 12 years on a murder conviction. Ms. McKnight was prosecuted when her stillborn baby was found to have cocaine in its system.

While we deplore the idea that any mother could be responsible for the death of her child, one simple question must be asked: Who will be next?

Every day in this country, young and uninformed pregnant women don’t eat properly, neglect to get regular pre-natal checkups, travel in a vehicle without buckling up, smoke, drink alcohol, and yes, take drugs. They cross against the light in traffic. They lift heavy objects or don’t get enough sleep or don’t take their vitamins. They stuff themselves with fried foods and gain so much weight as to endanger their babies. By extension, they are not just harming themselves, they are indeed harming their unborn children, not because they consciously want to but because of ignorance or despair or addiction of one sort or another.

In Ms. McKnight’s case, her attorneys argued that she became addicted to drugs in the aftermath of her mother’s death in a hit-and-run. The next step was homelessness as her life quickly spun out of control. What followed was a lifestyle that is so alien as to most of us as to seem like a movie script. Her mother, attorneys said, had been her lifeline, the person who protected her child, one described as being of "low-level intelligence," against the cruelties of the "normal" world.

The prosecution of Ms. McKnight, who apparently had every intention of keeping and raising her child (she had already picked out a name), was more political than for any greater motivation, pursued at a time when the state’s attorney general was seeking the governor’s office.

The case made a political statement; no doubt about it. But what would have been the result had she received sympathy as a mother who had lost her child, indeed who had lost everything important to her?

Perhaps Ms. McKnight would have continued her downward spiral even further into the uselessness of drug abuse. But imagine this: Wouldn’t society be better served if someone had given her some help in kicking her drug habit? She might have then served as an inspiration rather than some political example. Is there any benefit to Regina McKnight being in prison? She might have been able, with help, to get a job, support herself, become someone who could then help other women. Has her incarceration saved any more babies from being born to mothers who were incapable of caring for them, who are uneducated or poor or addicted or simply don’t care?

Did it result in our state creating a workable, successful yet economically feasible program to help young mothers who have neither good parental guidance for their own lives or because of circumstances more than choice make poor decisions?

Has her drug supplier been arrested and punished, not just for his part in maintaining her addiction but for the likely hundreds of other lives he may have helped ruin?

Regina McKnight is not to be admired for the direction in which she has taken her life. But she didn’t do it without help. And our human kindness level went down a notch when we allowed politics to put her in prison.

The Supreme Court missed the opportunity to stand up for healthier babies and the battle against drug abuse. Regina McKnight was made an example, all right, but likely not as the prosecutors intended. Instead, she represents not a state’s efforts to protect its children but its self-righteous, almost gleeful need to flog those who for whatever reason don’t — or can’t — make the decisions the state believes they should.

Copyright 2003, Anderson Independent Mail. All Rights Reserved.