Parents’ Actions Not Conspiracy, Jury Says

In a case that tested the line between tough love and child abuse, an Orange County jury Monday acquitted a Yorba Linda couple of conspiring to abuse their teenage son but deadlocked on a lesser charge.

Grady Machnick, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant, and his wife, Deborah, a former elementary school principal, stood accused of emotionally abusing their son over several years. They forced him to spend nights outside for not doing his homework and in one instance sent the teen to school with dog feces in his backpack as punishment for not picking up after the family dog.

Jurors agreed the parents’ discipline was not part of a criminal conspiracy, but they could not decide whether it amounted to misdemeanor child abuse. The panel, made up mostly of parents and grandparents, were divided 7 to 5 in favor of convicting Deborah Machnick of misdemeanor child abuse and voted 9 to 3 to acquit Grady Machnick of those charges.

Many jurors said that though they disapproved of the parents’ conduct, they shared the Machnicks’ frustrations of trying to discipline a wayward child. The Machnicks’ son earned poor grades, refused to do his chores, shoplifted and stole money from his parents.

“People [on the panel] were saying things like ‘I wouldn’t have done that’ or ‘A normal parent wouldn’t have done that,’ ” said jury foreman Mark Lindeman, a 45-year-old father from Mission Viejo. “[But] we can’t use our value system to judge what’s been done in their household.”

Disturbed by Actions

Many of the jurors who voted to convict Deborah Machnick, who is on unpaid leave from the Walnut Unified School District, said they were disturbed that she made the teen strip and took a photograph of him as a form of punishment. Several said they were also bothered that Grady Machnick woke his son at 3:30 in the morning and forced him out of the house before he left to work at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles because he thought the boy could not be trusted in the home alone.

“Breaking someone down mentally, that’s what they tried to do,” said juror Susan Abdullah, who voted to convict both parents of misdemeanor child abuse. “There were no bruises, but the whole behavior of Grady and Deborah was to break him down mentally. I think it was excessive and unreasonable and not justified.

“If I were in their shoes, I would have sought professional help. I didn’t see that coming from them,” Abdullah added.

Prosecutors are scheduled to return to court Jan. 3 to tell Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey if they intend to pursue a second trial on the misdemeanor abuse charge.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Pierce declined to discuss the jury’s verdicts.

The Machnicks’ lawyers said they hoped prosecutors won’t retry the case, saying that parenting strategies are so diverse that no jury would unanimously agree to convict.

‘Not Black and White’

“The nature of what occurred here, it’s really not black and white,” said Salvatore Ciulla, Deborah Machnick’s attorney. “It’s different from breaking an arm or the type of physical abuse we would see.”

Several jurors said Deborah Machnick, the boy’s stepmother, was more to blame than her husband. Grady Machnick testified he didn’t know she put dog feces in his son’s backpack or took a nude photograph of him.

In his closing argument, Ciulla said the stepmother’s decision to put dog excrement in the boy’s backpack did not amount to criminal abuse. In order to convict the parents of child abuse, the jury had to agree that their conduct was unjustifiable and caused physical or emotional injury.

“It’s not a great parenting technique. If you’re grading, A, B, C, D or F, maybe it’s an F,” Ciulla said. “But it’s not a crime.”

Some jurors agreed. “It’s something I would never do to my children, [but] I don’t think it amounted to a crime,” said Tony Osmena, who has two teenagers.