Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Colorado Supreme Court People v. Roggow 11SC597

Decision here.

   Roggow was a landlord who was on friendly terms with his tenants.  They lived a few blocks away, frequently socialized, and sometimes he would pay the tenants kids to do yardwork.  The friendly relationship soured quickly when he hit on his tenants' eight-year old daughter and felt her up a couple times while they were at the hardware store buying shower parts for the rental house.

   Roggow was arrested, and eventually convicted of sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of trust.  The relevant statute defines a person in a position of trust as follows:

One in a "position of trust" includes, but is not limited to, [1] any person
who is a parent or acting in the place of a parent and charged with any of
a parent's rights, duties, or responsibilities concerning a child, including a
guardian or someone otherwise responsible for the general supervision of
a child's welfare, or [2] a person who is charged with any duty or
responsibility for the health, education, welfare, or supervision of a child,
including foster care, child care, family care, or institutional care, either
independently or through another, no matter how brief, at the time of the
unlawful act.

   Pay special attention to "includes, but is not limited to."

   Roggow appealed, arguing that he wasn't in a position of trust because he wasn't specifically charged with any supervisory responsibility by his victims' parents.  The court of appeals agreed, and reversed his conviction.  The people appealed.

   The Colorado Supreme Court held that the above definition of a person in a position of trust is meant to be illustrative, not exclusive.  The court further held that being in a position of trust isn't so much a matter of being charged with authority over the child, but rather of being given special access to the child because of a relationship.  In this case, Roggow was a family friend who took the kids on a shopping trip without the parent's foreknowledge, and the parents weren't alarmed when they found out about it (at least not until they found out about that one little detail...).  The court held that this was enough evidence of a position of trust to support a conviction.

   Roggow's conviction was reinstated.  Creep.

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