Porter County students hear oral arguments in appeal weighing child discipline vs. abuse

Chicago Tribune

12-03-2025

Chesterton High School senior Karalena Heredia had a memorable 18th birthday Tuesday, serving as a student bailiff for a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals.
About 100 students in the criminal justice class at Wheeler High School heard oral arguments in a case involving parental privilege when it comes to disciplining a child – and where to draw the line.
All three judges – Nancy Vaidik, Elizabeth Tavitas and Mary DeBoer – served as judges in Northwest Indiana before their service on the appellate court.
After the oral arguments were heard from defense attorney David Joley, of Fort Wayne, and John Oosterhoff, of Indianapolis, representing the state, the three judges answered students' questions about anything except the case.
The court's opinion in Norwood v. State is expected in about a month, DeBoer said.
The court holds about 40 of these Appeals on Wheels events every year, Vaidik said. 'It's a great event for us, but it's a lot of work,' she said.
It's good for students to have a positive first encounter with the legal system, but it's good for the judges, too. 'We get to see people. We get to interact with people,' she said.
When Vaidik was Porter Superior Court judge, she got about 100 calls a day, she said. It's now just a handful a week.
Vaidik pointed out to the students that the three-judge panel was all women, something she would not have encountered when she was their age. In fact, when she began her legal career, she encountered few women serving as judges or even attorneys, she said.
Now the 15-member Court of Appeals has seven women.
DeBoer told the students she first served as a deputy prosecutor, then magistrate, then was appointed Porter Circuit Court judge by then-Gov. Eric Holcomb in 2019, then was appointed to the Court of Appeals last September.
'My first judgeship, I ran for office,' replacing a predecessor she disagreed with, Vaidik said. 'I think I can do better,' she thought. 'How arrogant I was.'
Running for judge meant campaigning, including passing out candy at Fourth of July parades and 'going to every single pancake breakfast there was in the county, and I can't eat pancakes,' Vaidik said.
'We're here to encourage you' to pursue careers in the legal field, Vaidik told the criminal justice students.
Instructor Ralph Wheeler said the students in that course had already covered court procedures, including a field trip to the federal court. Appeals on Wheels was a good experience for them, he said.
Porter Superior Court Judge Christopher Buckley thought so, too. He was enlightened by the Norwood v. State case and the three judges' questions directed to attorneys on both sides.
The case involves a mother of an 11-year-old boy who was frantic when she left her son home alone during work and couldn't contact him by phone, text messages or even through a videogame, Joley explained.
He provided the narrative for the three judges, but also to explain the case to the audience.
'She actually calls her DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworker: 'Can you help me? I don't know where he's at,'' Joley said.
The mom leaves work and finds her son in a shopping center parking lot. While the mom is pulling the boy out of the car by his hair, as he's refusing to get out, he punches her. They get into a scuffle, and she's sitting on top of him, restraining him, Joley said.
'She was angry at this point,' he explained.
When police arrived, they found the mom had her son in a chokehold and the boy was gasping for air.
The mother was found guilty of felony domestic battery and felony strangulation and sentenced to a total of six years, four incarcerated and two on probation.
'The amount of force she used against LN,' the unnamed minor, was excessive, Oosterhoff said.
DCS had been involved with the family because the boy had run away before this incident, he said. In that case, the mother drove across a golf course to chase down the boy, Oosterhoff said.
Joley argued that parental privilege, the right to determine appropriate discipline, applies in his client's case. Oosterhoff countered that the mom's measures were excessive, crossing the line as to what's acceptable.