Baby Jessica Case: 1993

views updated

Baby Jessica Case: 1993

Defendants: Cara and Dan Schmidt
Plaintiffs: Jan and Roberta DeBoer
Plaintiff Claim: The DeBoer's sought to block the order of the Michigan Supreme Court to return Jessica to the Schmidts
Chief Defense Lawyer: Marian Faupel
Chief Lawyer for Plaintiff: Scott Bassett
Justices: William H. Rehnquist, Harry A. Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Place: Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision: July 30, 1993
Verdict: The DeBoer's request was denied

SIGNIFICANCE: The Baby Jessica case caused people to consider the risks and problems inherent in private adoptions.

In 1990, an Iowa woman named Cara Clausen found out that she was pregnant. Single and 29 years old, Cara had recently split with her boyfriend, Dan Schmidt, and was dating a man named Scott Seefeldt. Before the birth, she told friends she couldn't care for the baby on her own and would give it up for adoption. When the child was born on February 8, 1991, she named Scott as the father, and within two days, she and Scott signed papers waiving their parental rights.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jan DeBoer, 37, and his wife, Roberta (known as Robby), 32, were eager to adopt. She had had a hysterectomy some years before, so she could not become pregnant. The DeBoers had spent several years sweating out adoption procedures in Michigan, where adoption was legal only through bureaucratic public services. Iowa permitted legal private adoptions. A Cedar Rapids lawyer who was married to Robby DeBoer's cousin, heard about Cara's pregnancy and her plan to give the baby up for adoption. He put the DeBoers in touch with Cara. Another lawyer, John Monroe, took care of the required paperwork, and on March 2, 1991, the DeBoers took the six-day-old baby home, named her Jessica, and looked forward to becoming full legal custodians in six months.

Biological Mother Regrets Adoption

Almost immediately Cara began to have second thoughts. When her old boyfriend Dan showed up, she told him the baby she had just given up for adoption was his, not Scott's. Cara also attended a support-group meeting of the Concerned United Birth parents. There she listened to the sad tales of mothers who regretted giving up their babies for adoption. Before Jessica was more than a month old, Cara and Dan, who were now living together, filed motions to get her back.

It took six months to process genetic tests to prove that Dan indeed was the father. By the end of 1991, an Iowa court, accepting the proof of Dan Schmidt's parenthood and recognizing that he had never signed away his rights, nullified the adoption before it became final. The court ordered the DeBoers to return Jessica to her biological parents, Clara Clausen and Dan Schmidt.

Devastated, the DeBoers decided to fight to keep Jessica. They wrote countless letters to children's rights groups around the country. They contacted reporters. They uncovered the fact that Dan Schmidt had fathered two other children, neither of which he supported, by two other women, neither of whom he had married.

In January 1992, the Iowa Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which dragged on throughout the year. Meanwhile, Cara and Dan were married in April 1992. Finally, in December, in an 8-to-1 decision, the higher court upheld the lower court's ruling. Although Dan's fitness as a parent was questionable, it said, his rights held priority over Jessica's. The child was ordered transferred to Iowa immediately.

The DeBoers stood their ground. Despite the Iowa court's finding them in contempt for defying its ruling, they appeared before Judge William Ager, Jr., of Washtenaw County Circuit Court in Michigan. Their lawyer, Suellyn Scarnecchia, argued that Michigan had jurisdiction in the case because Jessica had resided there for at least six months and because the majority of her records and personal relationships were in that state. The judge agreed to assume jurisdiction on behalf of the state of Michigan in order to determine what would be in Jessica's best interest.

On February 12, 1993, citing the testimony of child psychologists that Jessica would bear permanent emotional damage if she were removed from the only parents she had ever known, Judge Ager awarded custody of the child to the DeBoers. Agreeing with their lawyers that there was "much to lose and little to gain" in moving the two-year-old, and turning to the Schmidts, he said, "Think possibly of saying, 'Enough.'" He urged the two couples to keep in touch, but cautioned them not to lead Jessica to believe she had four parents.

The Battle Over Jessica Continues

Arguing that the judge had acted improperly by assuming jurisdiction from another state, the Schmidts headed for the Michigan Court of Appeals. Within six weeks, in a 3-to-O decision that ruled only on the question of jurisdiction, that court agreed with the Iowa courts. The DeBoers had 21 days to file an appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Meantime, "Baby Jessica" had become a household name and the case caused millions to more closely consider the risks and problems of adoption. In about half of all adoptions, the natural fathers, even if they are known, cannot be located. But what if they turn up demanding their "parental rights?" Who knows—wondered columnists, Op-Ed writers, and talk-show hosts—how permanent any adoption is?

Michigan's seven Supreme Court judges heard the arguments. Representing Baby Jessica, Attorney Scott Bassett said the Schmidts were strangers to the child. "These children don't care about biology," he contended. "They know who loves them and who they love." Schmidt lawyer Marian Faupel insisted that the DeBoers had manipulated delays and appeals in order to buy time to bond with the child—to whom they had no legal right. She added that it was not too late for Jessica to bond with her biological parents, for children are not fragile. "They are somewhere between forged steel," she said, "and delicate teacups."

In June 1993, Cara Schmidt gave birth to a second child, Chloe. On July 2, 1993, Michigan's highest court ruled 6-1, that Michigan held no jurisdiction in the case over Baby Jessica and that she was to be handed over to the Schmidts within one month.

Jan and Robby DeBoer filed a request for the Michigan Supreme Court to stay its ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court could rule on their request to have the case heard there. The court refused the stay, 6—1. Ad hoc "Justice for Jessi" groups began planning bus trips to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate on the steps of the Supreme Court building.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who handled emergency cases from Michigan for the Court, considered the DeBoers's request to block the order, giving Jessica to the Schmidts. He refused. Their argument, he said, "rests, in part, on the relationship that they have been able to develop with the child after it became clear that they were not entitled to adopt her."

On July 30, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to lift the deadline for Jessica's return to her natural parents. Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented. "This is a case that touches the raw nerves of life's relationships," wrote Justice Blackmun. "I am not willing to wash my hands of this case at this stage, with the personal vulnerability of the child so much at risk."

Three days later, the 2 and one-half-year-old was carried, screaming, from the DeBoers's home by their lawyer, Suellyn Scarnecchia, and placed in the back seat of a minivan filled with Jessica's favorite toys, clothing and bedding. With Cara and Dan Schmidt, Jessica flew the 400 miles from Ypsilanti, Michigan, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, by private plane. She napped during half the trip, then awoke and played contentedly with her toys. When they landed, Baby Jessica had a new name, Anna Jacqueline Schmidt.

Nine months later, Jan and Robby DeBoer successfully adopted a newborn boy. His name is Casey. Meanwhile, child psychoanalyst Lucy Biven, who supervised Baby Jessica's transition to the Schmidt home, where she is now known as Anna Lee, reported that "her adjustment has been so unexpectedly good that I give the Schmidts and the DeBoers a lot of credit." And, a year after the transfer, Cara Schmidt said, "Everyone guaranteed—guaranteed—that she would have short-term trauma, that she wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, she'd cry. It didn't happen. She progressed rapidly."

Sadly, the strain of the court cases permanently damaged both marriages. In October 1999, Jan and Robby DeBoer divorced after 17 years of marriage. They released a statement after the divorce, saying that, "The loss of our daughter was more than our mariage could handle." Later that month, Cara and Dan Schmidt also announced their plans to divorce.

Anna Lee and her younger sister Chloe live permanently with their father, Dan. According to Dan Schmidt, Anna at age 9 had no memory of the custody battle that once raged around her.

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.