It is a case so heart-wrenching that a key ruling referenced the biblical Solomon, who, a Missouri judge said, at least had the option to decree that the child be cut in half.
Now, after the Missouri Supreme Court reversed a lower court's earlier parental rights decision, many more months are likely to pass before it's known who will have custody of a 4-year-old boy born to an undocumented Guatemalan woman and adopted without her consent by an American couple in Carthage, Missouri.
In a decision handed down Tuesday, the state's high court ruled that Missouri violated its own laws in terminating the parental rights of Encarnacion Bail Romero, who was imprisoned after a 2007 immigration sting at a poultry processing plant.
But instead of ordering the child returned to his biological mother, it sent the case back to a lower court for retrial.
"The trial court plainly erred by entering judgment on the adoption petition and terminating (the) mother's parental rights without complying with the investigation and reporting requirements," Judge Patricia Breckenridge wrote in the court's principal opinion.
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