SWINGLE LAUDS NEW PROBE TEAM

The Cape Girardeau County official charged with organizing a child-death investigating team under a bill signed into law last week applauded the measure Friday.

"I think it's a good law," said the official, Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle. "I think it's going to make it harder to get away with the murder of children."

Gov. John Ashcroft signed the bill Wednesday. The law, which takes effect Aug. 28, requires the teams in every county.

Any death of a child under 15 years of age would have to be reviewed under the law. Autopsies are mandated for any child from one week to one year of age when the child dies "suddenly when in apparent good health," the bill says.

The autopsy requirement is one of the biggest changes in the law, said Swingle. "In the past many times the death of a child that age may have been attributed to sudden infant death syndrome and there wouldn't have been an autopsy."

Swingle is required by the law to include on the team, along with himself, the county coroner; county law enforcement personnel; individual representatives from the state Division of Family Services and juvenile court, and a provider of public health-care services. However, the law does not limit team members to only these officials.

The county coroner, John Carpenter, would have to determine the need for a review in a death and immediately notify the chairman of the death review team. Following notice, the team would be activated within 24 hours to investigate any death that includes one or more suspicious circumstances described in "protocol" developed by the Department of Social Services, says the bill.

That protocol and related rules and guidelines are yet to be prepared, said Swingle.

Carpenter Friday called the law "a good piece of legislation" and said he's glad Ashcroft signed the bill. Both the Missouri Coroners and Medical Examiners Association had endorsed the legislation, he said.

"We think it's a very good protection for the children." He said he and Swingle would meet sometime next week to start the process of forming the county's investigative team.

State Rep. Mary Kasten, R-Cape Girardeau, helped put the legislation together. Kasten said she was one of four state representatives from the Children, Youth and Families Committee who worked on the legislation with a task force organized by Gary Stangler, director of the state's Department of Social Services.

Serving on the task force, she said, were prosecuting attorneys, coroners, juvenile officers, and workers from the Department of Social Services.

Kasten said the law addresses "such a horrendous problem" and is something the state needed to establish for a long time.

"It's something you hate to think you need to have laws for, but you do. The only person in the world who can protect (the children), if their parents don't..., is the state, which must come up with some protective kinds of laws."

The tragedy Kasten says she hopes the law will help to overcome is those where other children are being abused in addition to the one who was discovered killed or abused by the caretaker.

"Serving on this committee was the most heart-tugging thing," she said, "because I learned more than I thought was ever possible about what one person can do to another human being."

Swingle said the county shouldn't have to spend much to adhere to the law.

"The manpower for it already exists at each agency. It will be similar to the Major Case Squad where you'll be using manpower you already have available. They'll just be working together."

The county would have to pay for the autopsy and transportation of the body of a child between one week and one year of age, but the law allows for reimbursement by the state.

Lawmakers drafted the law after a pilot program in Boone County that turned out to be very successful, said the prosecutor. The program was started by county Prosecuting Attorney Joe L. Moseley.

Carpenter said the Boone County program has existed three years.