Marchella Brett-Pierce

Unqualified for Prosecution: Why Qualified Immunity Should Protect Employees of Child Protective Service Agencies from Criminal Liability

Neal Shechter, J.D. Candidate

Marchella Brett-Pierce’s mother Carlotta has gone to trial for murder. Earlier this month, the New York media watched as Marchella’s eight-year-old brother testified against Carlotta and accused her of malnourishing and abusing her children. Meanwhile, social workers Chereece Bell and Damon Adams have been arguing pre-trial motions while awaiting charges of criminally negligent homicide in the related case. But noticeably absent from the entire discussion of the Brett-Pierce media coverage is the fact that New York fails to extend any form of immunity from civil or criminal prosecution to social workers who fail to investigate—or satisfactorily investigate, as in the Brett-Pierce case—reports of child abuse.

Brooklyn Case May Set Precedent for Criminal Liability for Social Workers

Part II: Expanding Criminal Negligence Liability for Third-Party Actions

Neal Shechter, J.D. Candidate

On November 16, 2011, Judge Patricia DiMango of the Kings County State Supreme Court issued a 22-page opinion denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss and ordering social workers Chereece Bell and Damon Adams to stand trial in the Marchella Brett-Pierce case. Although the decision on the motion to dismiss is not yet available, it is already attracting attention as the case heads toward a very public trial. Judge DiMango, who was recently profiled by the New York Times, held that evidence of the social workers’ failure to notice the young girl’s malnourishment and the alleged failure to appropriately monitor the family could be sufficient to allow the criminally negligent homicide charges to go to the jury. Her opinion sets a precedent which some feelcould indict the entire social work profession, and an examination of the history of criminal negligence law in New York shows how much this opinion could reshape the definition of criminally negligent conduct.

Brooklyn Case May Set Precedent for Criminal Liability for Social Workers

Part I: The Case of Marchella Brett-Pierce

Neal Shechter, J.D. Candidate

For some, the future of the social work profession is being decided in an unassuming Brooklyn trial court in October, as New York prosecutors sift through a particularly brutal case of child abuse that has received national headlines, and ask the court to assign criminal liability to all those whom prosecutors claim were in a position to prevent the abuse.

For others, the case represents a dramatic step toward accountability and transparency in a system that many feel is broken and beyond repair.

Either way, the story of four-year-old Marchella Brett-Pierce has ignited a firestorm of attention and spawned a seemingly endless stream of litigation over the liability of a city agency and its employees for the wrongs inflicted upon a child by an allegedly negligent and abusive parent.