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Baby dies from vodka drink, father charged with murder
By KBell in According to K
July 3, 2012

I'm usually torn when it comes to prosecuting parents who have unintentionally killed their children. You know, the harshest punishment has probably already been levied.

But unless this guy had a faucet that ran vodka, his purported 'negligence' is too much to sympathize with. Keith Antonine Furlow is charged with murder after his 4-month-old baby girl died from what prosecutors say was a concoction of formula and vodka.

The public defender is calling it an accident. We don't know all the facts now, of course, but a dead 4-month-old is a little more than an "oopsie."

I'm reminded of the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize winning story, "Fatal Distraction," about parents who forgot their children in sweltering cars. Often, they realized their fatal distraction hours later, hours after their babies had died.

It's a story I could only bear to read once. But it's also an important read, reminding us how the business of our lives can come to a deafening halt. And then we get it. Slow down.

The article also poses the question, "Forgetting a child in the backseat of a car Is a horrifying mistake. Is it a crime?"

What do you think?

Obviously it's hard to make a sweeping judgment for all cases, but should parents be charged with crimes in the accidental deaths of children?