Manslaughter charges against Lisa Roofener, a Vilonia woman accused of causing her elderly father's death, have been dropped.
A recently released autopsy report from the Arkansas Medical Examiner's Office indicates the man died of natural causes, specifically a heart attack.
Roofener was acting as a full-time caregiver for her 82-year-old father, C layton "Bill" Paul, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, at the time the charges were filed. In late December of 2006, her father became violently agitated while in a confused state and a scuffle between the father and daughter ensued. Roofener got control of the cane and threw it out a back door, she told police. After the scuffle, she said, her father died of an apparent heart attack.
"I did CPR and all that on him," she said, but her efforts were unsuccessful.
In early January, as Roofener was preparing herself and her children for the evening's visitation, she was arrested at her home on a charge of manslaughter.
The probable cause warrant that led to her arrest was prepared by Faulkner County deputy prosecuting attorney Charles Finkenbinder and approved by Faulkner County Circuit Judge Charles "Ed" Clawson.
Clawson said he approved the warrant partly out of consideration for Roofener's admission to misdemeanor domestic battery charges in Sept. 2004 in which her father was the alleged victim.
"I pled guilty to keep that from being a major issue," Roofener said Friday. "My dad had voluntarily gave a statement that nothing happened, but ... my public defender thought I should plead to a misdemeanor. I just didn't know that it would affect me for the rest of my natural life."
Finkenbinder described this previous conviction as "a red flag" Friday, and said the fact that Roofner was still acting as a full-time caregiver of her mother also led to the charges being filed before the results of her father's autopsy were known.
Assuming that a person's actions had led directly to the death of one they were caring for, he explained, it would not be prudent to allow that person to continue to care for another person.
"It would be probably not common," Clawson said, for someone in Roofener's situation to be charged with manslaughter before the results of an autopsy were known, but the circumstances surrounding this particular case made the decision to pursue charges seem reasonable.
After it became known that Paul's death was the result of natural causes and no wounds were present, Finkenbinder said, it was clear that the evidence did not point to the foul play his office feared had occurred.
When asked if manslaughter charges could be brought against a person when the victim died of natural causes, Clawson responded: "I would not think so, because manslaughter requires an affirmative act by somebody; they've got to do something that leads to another's death, and if the death is caused by natural causes, it is by definition not a homicide."
Finkenbinder responded to the same question by saying that charges could conceivably be filed depending on the answers to questions of whether or not someone in Roofener's situation could have fled to avoid a confrontation such as the "scuffle" that apparently led to the heart attack and whether the alleged perpetrator or victim was acting as the aggressor in the confrontation.
These questions, Finkenbinder added, would have been at the forefront had a trial taken place.
Roofener's attorney, Frank Shaw, said he was confident Roofener would be exonerated all along.
"My client was confident from the very beginning that the autopsy would be in her favor and she was right," Shaw said. "Upon receiving the autopsy report and giving it sufficient review, the prosecutor's office decided to dismiss the charges and I applaud them for doing the right thing."
Along with the charge came a no-contact order that prohibited Roofener from being within 100 yards of her ex-husband or three children. Custody of the children went to their father after Roofener's arrest, and Roofener claims that the father did not allow the children to attend their grandfather's funeral, which continues to trouble the woman.
Though Finkenbinder and Clawson wished to stress that being charged with a crime does not imply guilt, Roofener said she felt what she described as "the court of public opinion" had already ruled against her.
She said Friday that she hoped everyone who heard news of her charges would also find out that the charges were dropped.
"I just want this to all be over with so we can all get back to our lives and finally grieve the way we should have been able to," she said.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
