Following a one-day trial, a six-person jury in Hastings, Minnesota, found a 60-year-old Lakeville man guilty of child neglect in connection with his leaving his 11-year-old son alone to travel to California. The man has not seen his son since he left on July 18, but he is fighting to regain custody of him. Neither his attorney nor the Dakota County prosecutor was certain of how the verdict in the criminal case would affect the civil child custody proceedings.

It took the jury took just 30 minutes of deliberation to find that the man, who was raising his son alone, violated the law when he slipped out of the house he shared with the boy on July 18 to track down some distant relatives for financial help. The man worked as an architect but due to the poor economy had trouble securing jobs.

Days before he was to lose the house to foreclosure, the man sat down and wrote his son a letter explaining his plan and telling him to go live with a neighbor family. The boy tearfully rode his bicycle to the neighbors' house and lived there for over a month while authorities searched for his father, who was later arrested in California.

The boy currently lives with his maternal great-aunt, a licensed foster mother. His mother, who had not seen him since he was 2, re-established contact and has been granted visitation.

In his closing argument, the prosecutor called the man's actions "one of the clearest cases of child neglect I've ever seen." The father's attorney argued during the trial that the boy was never in danger and was not harmed.

Following the verdict, the father tearfully said he loved his son and would not give up his fight to regain child custody. The attorney handling his custody proceeding said he could not tell what impact the guilty verdict would have on that effort.

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Love fails as his defense: Runaway dad convicted," Pat Pheifer, Jan. 26, 2012