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Follow-up on Step-Mother Kidnaping Case

On September 21,2007 Robert J. Durst  wrote questioning the logic of step mother's  conviction for kidnaping her step children.
 
A Ms.Froland left the country with her step children and her husband, their father. The kidnaping charge against her husband, the father, had been dismissed on the theory that he had the right to relocate/travel with his children.
 
However, an Appellate Court had ruled that his rights did not extend to his second wife, the children's step mother,  Ms. Froland. The Appellate Court held that  she could be convicted of kidnaping the children notwithstanding the dismissal of the charges against her husband.
 
Mr. Durst questioned the logic of that decision and urged the New Jersey Supreme Court to reverse it.
 
On December 12, 2007 the Supreme Court released its opinion. The opinion written by Justice Virginia Long (one of the State's foremost Family law experts and a former Family Court Judge) found that Ms. Froland could not be convicted of kidnaping the children. The Court held that Ms. Froland not only had the consent of the children's father, but that he was a full co-participant with her.
 
Justice Long and the majority of the Court should be applauded for seeing through convoluted legal rhetoric and a very strained interpretation of the kidnaping statutes . To ruled otherwise would have potentially exposed every step parent in New Jersey to such charges by their husband/wife's former spouses.
 
The only question to be asked at this junction is why and how a prosecutor, the Trial Court and the Appellate Court would expend so much time, energy and judicial resources on such  an issue at a time when our Courts are already over burdened with legitimate Family Law issues?
 
Thank you to the majority of the Supreme Court for putting this to rest.

Full post as published by New Jersey Law Blog on December 19, 2007 (boomark / email).