Limiting passengers

If Missouri were like 26 other states, four Ozarks teenagers might still be alive today.

If Missouri had avoided the temptation to leave an enormous hole in its graduated driver's license law, two Newton County families could be thinking about graduation ceremonies, not funerals.

If Missouri legislators had done the right thing, the small community of Stella would likely not be grappling with the loss of four young people in the snap of a finger.

The four -- Natasha Brown, 16, her sister, Bobbi, 15, David Stamps, 17, and his sister, Bethany Cupples, 13 -- died in a traffic accident Sunday afternoon. Stamps would have graduated next week The car, driven by Natasha Brown, skidded on a wet curve and collided head on with a van. Six people in the van were taken to the hospital.

The accident would not surprise researchers. They know that the risk to a young driver rises exponentially with each teen passenger. Distractions accumulate, pulling the driver's attention away from the road.

That's why 26 states limit who can ride with 16-year-old drivers. The requirements vary. Some apply to all passengers; others just to teenage passengers. Some make family members exempt. In some states the restriction lasts a year; in others just one month. Three to six months is the norm.

Missouri legislators tragically chose not to include any of these possibilities in our graduated license system.

-- Springfield News-Leader

Do it for Erica

More than two people will be on trial in the case of Precious Doe, the name given the girl whose headless body was found along a road four years ago in Kansas City. In addition to the couple arrested last week in the death of 3-year-old Erica Michelle Marie Green, the laws of Missouri will be on trial.

At least 30 states have laws that help prosecutors to obtain first-degree murder convictions in the death of a child. Missouri isn't one of them. If Erica had been killed across the state line in Kansas, authorities would have a child-homicide law designed to prosecute the couple on a first-degree murder charge. The same would be true in Illinois. But prosecutors in Jackson County don't have that advantage.

[Last week], police in Kansas City finally identified the dead girl and arrested her mother, Michelle M. Johnson, 30, and her stepfather, Harrell Johnson, 25, on charges of felony murder and endangering the welfare of a child. The stepfather reportedly told police he became angry with the girl when she refused to go to bed. He said he was under the influence of alcohol and the hallucinogenic drug PCP when he grabbed the child, kicked her, then left her unconscious on the floor for two days.

The couple did not seek medical help for the child because they both had warrants out for their arrest, the mother told police. Following the girl's death, the couple carried the body to a wooded area where the stepfather told police he used hedge clippers to sever the child's head. The girl's torso was found in April 2001, and her head was found days later in a trash bag.

Erica's death should stir state lawmakers to enact a Precious Doe law next year. We owe at least that much to children who are killed by abusive parents or guardians.

-- St. Louis Post-Dispatch