Reference no: EM133235357

Sharan Ann Williams left her two young children with her boyfriend at his residence. The home had no kitchen or bathroom, limited furniture, and no working utilities. Since the power was not functional, a candle was lit in the children's room as they were put to sleep. At 1:00 a.m., the boyfriend woke to loud screams and saw that the room in which the children had been sleeping was on fire. The children perished before they could be saved. Williams was convicted of injury to a child, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed her conviction based on a lack of criminal intent, or mens rea, concluding eloquently that "there is legally insufficient evidence that appellant consciously disregarded a substantial or unjustifiable risk that her children would suffer serious bodily injury in a house fire if she took them from a house with utilities to one without utilities. Viewed objectively, this act [of] . . . leaving the girls in a room with a lit candle . . . does not involve a "substantial and unjustifiable" risk of serious bodily injury or death. There is nothing inherently dangerous about staying or sleeping in a structure that does not have utilities. Staying in a structure without utilities does not increase the likelihood of dying in a fire. . . If taking children to spend the night in a structure without utilities is conduct that involves an extreme risk of danger for which one may be subject to criminal prosecution for injury to a child should harm befall that child, the backwoods campers of the world are in serious jeopardy. Any adult who lights a campfire that emits a spark that lands on a child's pajamas and severely burns the child can be prosecuted as a felon. Scoutmasters beware."

Question: Did Sharan Ann Williams act 'recklessly' by leaving her children in a bedroom with a lit candle?