IN THE MATTER OF T.T.S.

2015 OK 36

Summary: Jones, natural mother of the child identified as T.T.S., was alleged to have failed to provide "appropriate parental care" for the child and to have placed the child in "threat of harm." These allegations arose from an incident when it is alleged that following a drug binge, mother was discovered by a law enforcement officer asleep with her boyfriend in a parking lot. Nearby, T.T.S. slept, unsupervised, in mother's car. Two windows had been broken on the vehicle and pieces of glass were located in T.T.S' child safety seat. DHS intervened and the child was determined to be a deprived child. DHS submitted a treatment plan and reported that mother was doing well in completing the treatment plan. The treatment plan provided several conditions precedent to the child being returned to Jones and included several 'To Do' items. Subsequently, mother was arrested and detained in the Grayson County, Texas jail. DHS moved to terminate the parental rights of Jones to the child based upon unspecified failures to meet the requirements of the treatment plan. Jones was unable to attend the trial due to her incarceration in Texas, but was represented by an attorney. At the trial DHS put on evidence that Jones had failed to meet the requirements of the treatment plan, and the plan was provided to the jury. However, neither the jury instructions nor the verdict form provided specific instances of alleged failure to meet the requirements of the treatment plan.

Legal Issues: The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in determining the rights of Jones at stake, quoted the United States Supreme Court in Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753-54, 102 S. Ct. 1388, 1394-95, 71 L. Ed. 2d 599 (1982) for the proposition that a parent's right to raise their child is a fundamental, constitutionally protected right. Having determined the magnitude of the right in question, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that "vigilant enforcement of the full panoply of procedural safeguards must be carried out in child deprivation cases."

With this as background, the Court noted that the trial court had followed the Uniform Jury Instructions recently promulgated by the Court itself. Nonetheless, the Court ruled that when a jury instruction fails to accurately reflect the law that it is the duty of the trial court to alter, supplement, or replace the jury instruction to properly reflect the law. Failure to do so amounts to fundamental error, and a decision based on an improperly stated jury instruction will be overturned at appeal.

Discussion: The Court takes the trial court to task for its failure to properly state the law in its jury instructions, but somewhat blithely brushes by the fact that it was the Court that recently approved the very jury instructions in question. Two companion cases were decided in quick order following this one on the same grounds, and the Court has amended the jury instructions to prevent future problems.