Mardardo F. v. Superior Court

In Mardardo F. v. Superior Court (2008) 164 Cal.App.4th 481, a 28-year-old father sought reunification services for his three-month-old son, but had brutally raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl when he was 15 years old. He was committed to the California Youth Authority (now the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Division of Juvenile Justice) (CYA) for a term of 25 years to life for the murder, and was dishonorably discharged from CYA at age 25. (Id. at p. 484.) At that time, he was still considered a threat to society. He had failed to complete a sex offender program, had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, had little or no insight into his offense, and had engaged in violent and sexually inappropriate behavior throughout the course of his CYA commitment. (Id. at p. 492.) In view of the father's history and his failure to rehabilitate, the court held he "came nowhere close" to meeting his burden of showing that reunification services for him would serve the best interests of his infant child. (Id. at pp. 484, 492.) The father's rape and murder of another child, though not his own child, coupled with his failure to rehabilitate himself, effectively ruled out any possibility that granting the father services would serve his infant child's best interests.