Palmer v. State

This appeal involves an unusual case, and develops out of a deplorable and distressing set of circumstances. The appellant (or defendant) now some eighteen or nineteen years of age, was convicted by the trial judge of the Circuit Court for Cecil County, sitting without a jury, of involuntary manslaughter.

The theory of the state’s case is that the appellant was guilty of gross, or criminal, negligence in permitting her paramour to inflict, upon her twenty months’ old child, prolonged and brutal beatings that finally resulted in the child’s death; and that her said negligence, under the…