A judge will decide in April whether to toss a reckless endangerment charge faced by an ex-State Police captain and his wife in the death of Alonzo Polk, who was pulled from the pool at a graduation party at the Dedham family’s home and later died.

James Coughlin and his wife, Leslie, are charged with reckless endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors following the death of Polk just 10 days shy of his 18th birthday in the Coughlin’s backyard pool last July. Their attorney filed the motion to dismiss the reckless endangerment charge on Jan. 10.

The Coughlins have pleaded not guilty to both charges. They appeared Thursday in Dedham District Court for a hearing on the motion but no decision was made and the court has scheduled the next hearing for April 6.

“It’s terrible all around for everyone,” the Coughlin’s attorney, Brian Kelly, of Nixon Peabody LLP, said following Thursday’s hearing. “By all measures, Mr. Polk was a great young man. The Coughlins are extremely upset by the whole situation.”

Thursday’s hearings centered on whether the Coughlins’ hosting of the party, where alcohol was present, justifies the reckless endangerment charge. Both Kelly and prosecutor Sean Riley cited precedents they say should convince Judge Michael Pomarole to rule in their favor.

Kelly argued the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 2019 ruling in Commonwealth v. Hardy should remove the reckless endangerment charge. In this case, the SJC reversed a lower court’s finding that a woman’s failure to strap her nephews into appropriate car seats represented involuntary manslaughter or reckless endangerment when they died from a car crash.

ADA Riley argued an Appeals Court 2016 ruling in Commonwealth v. Leonard proves the charge should stay.

That judgment reinstated child endangerment charges against a woman and her husband in connection with a group of teens drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana at the couple’s home.

Riley at the Thursday hearing argued that the Coughlin case “is all about the environment” of the party they hosted.

The availability of alcohol to minors — the Herald previously reported that Polk had a 0.01% blood alcohol content, indicating he was not legally drunk at the time — and the fact that the backyard pool where Polk drowned was dark establish reckless endangerment on the part of the Coughlins, Riley said. He also said that the pair heading indoors at around 11:40 p.m. left the party without adult supervision.

Kelly argued that the lighting, or lack thereof, of the pool at the time is “a red herring” as the law does not stipulate that a pool has to be lighted. He also said there were a number of legal adult partygoers in the yard even after the Coughlins had left and emphasized that the party was made up of student athletes, so the expectation that any of them couldn’t swim is improbable.