
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 31, 1993                   TAG: 9307310137
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

COURT WON'T INTERVENE IN CUSTODY FIGHT

The Supreme Court Friday refused to intervene in a custody fight over 2 1/2-year-old Jessica DeBoer, closing off the last legal avenue for a Michigan couple to keep the child they have cared for almost since her birth and have sought to adopt.

The case of the little girl "touches the raw nerves of life's relationships," two dissenting justices said. She must be returned to her biological parents by Monday.

Cara and Daniel Schmidt, of Iowa, have been trying to regain custody of Jessica since a few weeks after the girl's birth, when a then-unmarried Cara Clausen changed her mind about giving the child up for adoption.

For the more than two years since, Roberta and Jan DeBoer, who were never able to complete the adoption because of the Schmidts' intervention, have tried through numerous legal channels to hold onto Jessica.

In its order Friday, the court effectively endorsed a Monday decision by Justice John Paul Stevens refusing to delay a Michigan Supreme Court order giving the Schmidts custody.

Justices Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented from the one-sentence, unsigned order denying the request for a postponement. - The Washington Post

by CNB