Mother’s Sorrow Not Punishment Enough

You could argue that Marlene Heath has suffered enough. She will certainly be haunted for the rest of her days by the knowledge that her actions led to the death of her two sons. Perhaps no sentence a judge could impose would punish her any more.

You could believe, as Heath’s husband said, that the couple’s two dead toddlers “are jumping up and down in heaven” because Mommy avoided a prison term in their deaths.

Or you could wonder, as I do, when we will stop making addicted parents, such as Heath, the victims and start giving more weight to their children’s lives.

Heath’s two children--Jake, 3, and Dylan, 13 months--died last summer when she left them inside the family’s minivan in her driveway for more than three hours, while she slept off a bender inside.

Heath, 40, of Simi Valley was charged with child endangerment causing death, which could have landed her a 12-year prison term. She pleaded no contest in November, and prosecutors hoped the least she’d get would be a four-year prison sentence, the mandated minimum.

Instead, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Clark sentenced her last week to spend one year in County Jail, serve five years on probation, perform 500 hours of community service and attend 52 parenting classes.

Parenting classes? It seems like too little, too late to me. Her children, after all, are gone.

There are no perfect parents. All of us make mistakes, are occasionally stupid or selfish or short-sighted.

The Heath incident was one of a spate of cases here last summer involving parents who left their kids locked alone in hot cars while they ran errands. Several were arrested and jailed after worried bystanders called police. Most were sentenced to probation and parenting classes, and some lost custody of their kids.

But there’s a difference between leaving your kids in the car for 20 minutes while you run into the market for milk, and forgetting about them for near four hours because you’re simply too drunk to care. Both are wrong, and should be punished.

Probation and education seem to me like an appropriate combination for the parent whose carelessness put a child a risk.

But Heath displayed such disregard for her children’s safety that a year in jail is not enough. And I am not moved by the argument that her bad judgment was a function of her illness--the disease of alcoholism--so she should be set free to heal and grieve.

Every addict trying to parent children ought to be pursuing recovery. If you wait until your problem kills your children, you foreclose the option of sympathy.

Heath was a functioning alcoholic. But over the years there were drunken binges and blackouts, and more than once her husband warned her that her drinking might jeopardize the kids. Still, she didn’t seek help until her children were dead.

The night before their deaths, Heath bought four bottles of wine, she told police. She drank two that night, woke up the next morning and drank another. Then she buckled the kids in their car seats and went for a drive. An hour later, she pulled back into her driveway, hit the side of her house with the van, left the kids in their seats and stumbled inside.

She collapsed and slept for more than three hours, while the temperature hovered in the 90s outside. When she awoke, she ran out to her van in a panic and found her young sons, still strapped in their car seats, dead from the effects of the heat.

When police arrested her later that night--six hours after she said she’d had her last drink--her blood alcohol level was 0.17, more than twice the legal limit for driving.

I could see the emptiness in Heath’s eyes last week, as she sat in court holding onto her husband. I know she must regret what’s happened.

But you can find regret among many whose actions injure others--men who hit their wives in anger; drivers who take to the road after drinking and cause deadly accidents. Justice isn’t supposed to turn on how they feel about what they’ve done, but on how seriously society regards their crimes.

We punish, in part, to send a message. That’s why we toughened laws against drunk driving, why we finally decided to treat domestic violence with the seriousness it deserves.

And that’s why we ought not let Heath’s heartache or her addiction insulate her from responsibility for the tragic death of two little boys who depended on their mommy to keep them safe.

Judge Clark said he was persuaded not to send Heath to prison by her husband’s plea for mercy and the diligence with which she’s pursued recovery in the six months since her children died. Her husband called her a loving wife and devoted mother who was crippled by dependence on alcohol.

Since her arrest, she’s been in residential treatment, where, her lawyer says, she’s doing “extraordinarily” well.

“You have to understand about addiction,” said lawyer Louis Samonsky. “Alcoholism is a disease of denial. Alcoholics deny they’re alcoholics until something causes them to hit rock bottom. Sometimes it takes hitting bottom for them to get the help they need.”

I understand plenty about addiction and the fog it puts in addicts’ eyes. I hope jail officials find a way to let Heath continue her treatment behind bars. I hope she finds a measure of peace in the process of sharing her story, as her community service should require. And I hope her tragedy reminds others of the unintended consequences of abuse of alcohol.

But Heath’s “rock bottom” cost her sons their lives, and that’s not something that her embrace of recovery should be allowed to sweep aside. “It’s true that she’s definitely making an effort to get better,” admitted prosecutor Susan Aramesh. “But a lot of people feel remorse after they commit a crime. They find God, they clean up their lives. That shouldn’t affect how we judge the crime.

“If a baby-sitter had done this to someone’s children, we’d be outraged,” Aramesh said. “If a stranger knew they had an alcohol problem, continued to drink, continued to drive the kids and caused the death of someone’s children, the parents would be outraged and demand that they be punished. Should we demand any less because the crime was committed by the [children’s] mother?”

There’s a price to be paid in a case like this, and the pain of loss is not enough. We could show how much we value Marlene Heath’s children--and all children, defenseless against their parents’ failings--by making her punishment fit the crime.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks @latimes.com