State V. Green Ruling Is Going to Impact Your Oklahoma Deprived Case
Video Transcribed: What is the new child neglect while pregnant ruling mean to you and your deprived case? Hello, my name is Ryan Cannonie, I’m an CPS Defense Lawyer with the CPS Investigation Defense Law office. And I’m going to talk a little bit about how the new State v. Green ruling is going to impact your Oklahoma deprived case.
Well, we already know that this ruling made it so if you are the mother of a child and use any controlled substances while pregnant, now you can be looking at a child neglect felony charge. So that it’s a serious felony. It carries a lot of time. It also is an 85% felony, which means that you have to serve 85% of your sentence before you could be eligible for parole.
But how does that impact your deprived case? Well, for years, we’ve already had if you used substances while pregnant, then your child would be classified under child neglect under the deprived statutes. So that doesn’t change.
What does change is the fact that when this is investigated now, not only are you looking at a deprived case, but if they use a multi-disciplinary approach, meaning that they, DHS and law enforcement, collaborate on these cases, which most counties do now, you could also be looking at felony charges, not just losing your child.
So it’s real important at the very beginning of this, when they’re investigating, when DHS comes in, to call an attorney, get advice, know your rights, know what you can, what you have to say or talk about, what you don’t have to talk about and do you have to talk to them at all?
These are all things that you need to know about before you start talking, because once you tell DHS, their reports can be subpoenaed for law enforcement to look at, or law enforcement can share those as part of a multidisciplinary task force team. So even though those are confidential reports, a lot of times they do kind of get passed around. So it’s important to be aware of this.
So if you’re in this situation or if you’re worried or if you have questions or if a family member does, Please give an Oklahoma DHS attorney a call and we can help you with your legal matters.