This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

Santillanes (D) cut his 7-year-old nephew's neck with a knife during an altercation. The defense requested a jury instruction for criminal negligence as defined by the Model Penal Code Section 2.02(2)(d)(1985). The trial court refused and gave the instructed the jury on the civil standard: an act which a reasonably prudent person would foresee as involving an unreasonable risk of injury to himself or another and which such person in the exercise of ordinary care would not do. The statute defined the crime as negligently causing a child to be placed in a situation that may endanger the child's life or health. D was convicted and appealed.

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