Chief Justice Arthur Ngiraklsong, Associate Justice Lourdes F. Materne and Associate Justice Pro Tem C. Quay Polloi, in their 10-page opinion order on Thursday, remanded the case of Rosemary Osima to the trial division.
Osima was tried for assault and battery on Dec. 6, 2007.The trial division found her guilty and sentenced her on March 7, 2008 to 30 days of imprisonment with a fine of $50.But the sentence was suspended and Osima was placed on supervised probation.Osima appealed her conviction, arguing that the court applied the incorrect legal standard for assault and battery by a teacher to one of her students.The prosecution said Osima’s actions were unreasonable.The appellate division, in reversing her conviction, said it agreed “with appellant and find that the trial court applied the incorrect legal standard by simply stating that appellant’s actions were not reasonable.”The justices said “at minimum, the…standard for corporal punishment requires that reasonable men would find the action clearly excessive. This is not the standard the trial court applied and reversal is required.”They added that Osima’s actions were not even criminally unreasonable, much less clearly excessive.“If a poke to the forehead failing to produce lasting injury in response to a disrespectful act of a student is clearly excessive corporal punishment in the general judgment of reasonable men, there is little that is not,” the justices said.They said the trial court “omitted all analysis of whether the teacher’s behavior would be considered clearly excessive.”In Dec. 2007, two Palau High School students knocked on Osima’s office door during her lunch hour and then proceeded to ran away.Osima found the students later in class and took them to the principal’s office.The teacher lectured the students with an angry tone and used her finger to “poke” the head of one of them.This student’s mother filed a complaint. An investigation was conducted and Osima was charged with assault and battery.
