State v. Jackson

*804Webster, J.

Parents have a duty to care for and protect their children.1 They can be held criminally liable as principals when, for example, they harm their child by failing to seek necessary medical care.2 In this appeal, we address a parent’s duty to protect in the context of accomplice liability. Instead of utilizing the pattern accomplice instruction, the trial court instructed the jury that it could find a parent to be an accomplice to a crime against the child, if, although physically capable, the parent failed to come to her aid. So instructed, the jury found both defendants guilty of…