State v. Charles Adkins

State v. Charles Adkins
Court	Supreme Court, Opposh, Makko Oko
Decided	August 7, 2025 (2025-08-07)
Case history
Appealed from	Appellate Court of Appeals of Makko Oko
Case opinions
While the court finds fault with the accused's case for the untenable situation they were placed in, we cannot take improper action in ruling for them in a perfectly sound case. The plaintiff agreed to be responsible and to uphold the law when they were awarded their license to practice medicine, and even though their employer failed them, does not absolve them of the liability they caused. The court upholds the lower court's judgement and remands the case back to the original court for processing.
Majority	Sparks, Aponte, Graham, Gerlach
Dissent	Sullivan, Reynolds

State v. Charles Adkins is a case that was decided by the Supreme Court of Makko Oko on August 7th, 2025 on rather a medical professional could be charged with negligent homicide where the professional refused to perform an abortion for religious reasons.

Background

Dr. Charles Adkins was an gynecologist working at Makko Children's Hospital in 2025. Months after the ratification of the Sutton Abortion Act, Dr. Adkins had refused to provide an abortion to a minor citing their religious beliefs prevented them from doing so. Hospital administrators backed him, and the minor, who was never named, and is only known in this case as Citizen A, died after the fetus led to the minor developing preeclampsia, which went unnoticed by doctors at the hospital until they had a life-threatening emergency, in which case, there had already been severe and irreversible damage to their kidneys and lungs. After performing the abortion under the directive of administrators, Citizen A died the next day after being on a respirator in ICU.

After the medical report was filed and the bodies were sent to autopsy, Dr. Adkins was arrested the next week and charged with two counts of negligent homicide and one count of medical negligence. He was convicted of all charges and appealed immediately thereafter, having been heard by the Appellate Court of Appeals two months later. The appellate court ruled partially in favor of Dr. Adkins, overturning some of his convictions but keeping others, with the court saying at the time "These charges lack the proper evidentiary support to be sustained". His sentence ended up getting reduced 30% after the ruling, however, he appealed still to the Supreme Court, with them taking up his appeal soon thereafter.

Decision

The court ruled 4-2 in favor of the government, upholding the lower court's judgement.