JoAnn McGuckin Released -Pleads Innocent To Reduced Charge

From Sierra Times.com
By Nicholar K. Geranios, Associated Press Writer
June 29, 2001
http://educate-yourself.org/mc/nwomcguckinreleasedreducedcharge29jun01.shtml

SANDPOINT, Idaho (AP) - A judge on Thursday freed the woman whose six children held off sheriff's officers for five-days, reducing the child neglect charge against her to a misdemeanor. The unconditional release allows JoAnn McGuckin the right to see her children without supervision, but she still faces a custody battle with the state which has placed them in a foster home. A custody hearing was set for Friday. McGuckin had refused another judge's earlier offer to leave jail on condition that visits with her children be supervised. The children visited McGuckin in jail only once.

As McGuckin left jail, she said she would spend the night in a motel. ''It's one step in the right direction,'' she told reporters. ''We'll see where we go from here. I'm almost bewildered. I've been in jail so long it feels like home.''

The misdemeanor charge carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $3,000 fine. McGuckin pleaded innocent Thursday to the reduced charge. First District Court Magistrate Judge Debra Heise ruled there was insufficient evidence to support the felony neglect charge. ''I find the state failed to sustain its burden that the conditions were likely to cause death or great bodily injury,'' the judge said. ''The state has proven that their health may have been in danger.''

Heise had ordered the hearing to determine if criminal charges should be filed. McGuckin was arrested May 29, prompting a the standoff between the children, ages 8 to 16, and authorities at their ramshackle home. The ruling came after the judge heard testimony from her eldest, 19-year-old Erina McGuckin who left home last year to join the Navy. She complained to authorities about the living conditions at their home.

She said her family lived in an ''unsanitary...squalid'' house without running water since 1977, with little or no heat and intermittent electricity. On Wednesday she had said the family ate bread that had been gnawed by rodents and had to remove animal feces from their food as it was cooking.

But a conflicting account was given Thursday by Kathryn McGuckin, 16, who said the family had been under extreme stress for several years because both parents were sick. She said that had caused some of the housecleaning, laundry and other chores to remain undone for periods of time.

''We could not deal with the stress of the house, being on shift all night long with Dad, haul water, prepare food for the kids, and our education and keep up the house to the world standards of what all homes should be,'' Kathryn McGuckin said. The teen-ager said she was prepared to shoot anyone who attacked her brothers and sisters. She said she test-fired two weapons in the house to make sure they worked. ''If someone started shooting, we had the right to shoot back,'' she said

In other testimony Thursday, Dr. Tom Lawrence, a doctor who examined the McGuckin children after the standoff, said they appeared to be in good health. A videotape played by prosecutors showed the interior of the family's rural Idaho home littered with garbage, broken furniture, dog feces, spoiled food, maggots and mice. May. The family was prosperous in her early years living off the father's $500,000 trust fund. But when the money was spent, they descended into abject poverty.The house they occupied has been sold for unpaid taxes.