S.M. v. E.M.B.R.

The power to terminate parental rights is a responsibility of the judiciary that, when exercised erroneously, can inflict grievous and irretrievable loss. It is for this reason that parental rights will not be terminated absent strict adherence to the law and clear, cogent and convincing evidence that termination is warranted. This case represents a wholesale failure at the trial level to abide by these basic, fundamental limitations on the state’s power to impose what is, in essence, a family’s civil death penalty.

I concur in the principal opinion to the extent it holds that an entirely new…