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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 20231
[Legal]
Date Posted:
12/2/2008
6:30:31 pm EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 3,062
RSS: 17,119
Comments: 10
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Judge Allows Charges In Wis. Prayer-Death Case
Author: The Associated Press Source: First Amendment Center Online
Title: JUDGE ALLOWS CHARGES IN WIS. PRAYER-DEATH CASE
A judge refused yesterday to dismiss reckless-homicide charges against parents accused of praying instead of seeking a doctor's care as their 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes.
Marathon County Circuit Judge Vincent Howard rejected arguments that prosecuting Dale and Leilani Neumann violated their constitutional rights to freedom of religion and due process.
"The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief, but not necessarily conduct," Howard wrote in a 20-page decision.
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Community Thoughts: There are 10 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Two Boats And A Helicopter | Dec 5th. at 12:07:08 pm EST
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Mysteries Child (Garfield, Arkansas) - Email Me
If you've never heard that joke...
A man, trapped in his house by rising floodwaters, begged God for help. God promised to save him. Shortly, a man came along in a rowboat and offered to take the first man to safety. "God will help me," the first man replied. The water rose, and the man climbed to the second story. A crew came to the window in a motorboat and offered to take him to safety. "God will help me." The water rose; the man climbed on to his roof. A helicopter passed overhead; the crew offered to lower a rope. "No, God will help me." The man drowned. Upon entering Heaven, he demanded to see God. "Why didn't you keep your promise??" he demanded. "My child," God replied, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."
I would work a healing spell for a sick child. I performed several healing spells for my son's recurring ear infections. In response, I found a pediatrician who taught me to use garlic oil, tried a different antibiotic, and taught me to better discern when to get medicine and when to use heated oil for pain and let it run its course.
We've been infection-free for four months. Now if I can just feed him enough probiotics to get the damned Candida to go away and stay gone...
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| They're Not Reading The Bible | Dec 4th. at 10:22:14 am EST
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Snoozepossum (Mooresville, North Carolina) - Email Me - Web
If they're going to claim Biblical writ as their reason for not seeking medical help, someone needs to point out a verse to them:
"Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged." - Colossians 3:21
If an adult wants to refuse medical assistance, that's their decision. Any child, in any state, who is too young to be legally responsible for themselves should not be required to adhere to any tenant that puts their health or life at risk.
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| There Are Many States With Clearer Statutes | Dec 4th. at 1:56:54 am EST
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Shadowbear (Hillsboro, Oregon) - Email Me
Usually it is not permitted to refuse to seek medical care for a minor child no matter what an adult believes. Children have not got sufficient knowledge and judgement about what they believe or do not believe to be allowed to die from lack of care.
Adults may turn to prayer instead of medicine whenever they want to.
I would prosecute them with a good will because they did know the child needed care and that she was becoming more ill as time went by. Letting her die then saying "I thought god would heal her" is a total cop out - obviously god was not healing her or she would have been getting better not worse.
Difficult to deal with when the statutes are not clear.
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| Judge's Head | Dec 3rd. at 2:43:17 pm EST
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me
This judge is overdue to be removed from the bench, if this article's depiction of his pseudo-legalese bullsh!t is accurate. Were he correct that any broad criminal statutes automatically trump religious Free Exercise, there'd be no need for courts to exist to handle what are often rather tedious and detailed cases that annoy arrogant judges due to time taken from their calendars to do serious review of actual legal issues and fact.
It's well established in case law that most religious conflicts of civil rights versus other legal standards are ones of practice, NOT belief, and that belief is generally irrelevant except to the extent it can qualify a practice as seriously religious, versus more casual or not entitled to the same level of Constitutional protections. Ideological or belief issues are more likely to be Establishment Clause neutrality issues of public policy and government practices, whereas Free Exercise issues are rarely if ever about invisible beliefs per se, but about outwardly visible practices that affect others, or when there are limits on general rules that might restrict such practices.
This judge might do well disbarred and impeached, while others serious about such issues can start in EEOC regulations 29 CFR 1605, and follow its SCOTUS cites to underlying precedent, and then shift to the 3rd Circuit and nearly a decade of linked cases that established some of the most detailed legal tests for distinguishing "strict scrutiny" test entitled Free Exercise rights, from more casual religious or life practices, as well as when general government policies violate such rights or are preempted by them, where an individual interpretation of Buddhist vegan diet practices prevailed over such practices being considered optional by a monastic lineage, in the context of a PA inmate's diet standards trumping prison policies.
A better legal review of this case might have found the same result, but from answering "this court cannot tell from the facts absent a full trial" to two sets of more realistic questions. One is the balance of individual rights of the child relative to any parental or religious rights. Parents have some rights to discipline children, but not assault them, or impose religion or parental mental illness in forms that cross a tricky line of "permanent and irreparable harm" to the child. In a society of conflicted lifestyles and values as ours is, that can be messy, as there are psychological grounds to call some elements of nearly every possible child rearing practice abusive relative to this society as it exists. The other is parental religious rights relative to the same evaluation of impact on the child, but with another aspect this judge apparently ignored. That's not his assumption of criminal law trumping other rights because it exists, but whether in the instant case criminal law asserts a compelling government interest, applied in the least restrictive means, albeit homicide laws are necessarily broad but not without exceptions (eg, self defense) . Add to those evaluations another of whether this case is in fact one of negligent homicide, or merely some other form (s) of child abuse outside any religious or parental rights.
My sense of this case is that an incompetent judge sensed whatever he did would be appealed, and so acted lazy in not doing much work even trying to reach a legally valid opinion. However common that style is, it's a poor excuse for authority to give such people a black robe and the ability to direct gangs of armed sheriffs and police to act potentially not as law enforcement, but mercenary thugs perpetrating assaults, kidnappings, and extortion rackets, which are in effect how courts and judges function when they fail to constrain themselves to the rule of law, out of laziness, incompetency, arrogance, bigotry, or malice. "I suspect this will be appealed" is no excuse for such behavior, which rightfully deserves prosecution as violent crime by the court and its agents.
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| AMA New Approach | Dec 3rd. at 1:34:42 pm EST
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Just A Wolf (Seward, Michigan) - Email Me
Perhaps the medical community needs to put Jesus to work for them. I would love to see a billboard with Jesus pointing at traffic and saying, "Get your Child Vaccinated and Seek Medical Attention as Needed."
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| Don't They Realize... | Dec 3rd. at 10:24:21 am EST
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Colt (Goose Creek, South Carolina) - Email Me
...that a doctor may have been put to them as an answer to their prayers? Some people don't realize that their deity is not going to hold their hand and do everything for them.
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| What Kind Of God... | Dec 3rd. at 1:06:21 am EST
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Dana Corby (Anderson Island, Washington) - Email Me
...would do that?
I remember the way Pagan elists were spammed by Christians after the Indonesian tidal wave, asking how we could possibly worship Mother Nature when nature killed people.
And yet, the same people worship a God that they believe is so cruel as to murder their children before their eyes as a 'test of faith.'
'Tests of faith' are usually put forward by the insecure and abusive: "If you *really* loved me you'd... (give me all your money, abandon your family and friends, put up with my beating on you... that sort of thing.) The tester usually just keeps escalating until the testee either fails or completely loses all pride and sense of self - - oh, wait, that's what their religion is all about. Maybe it *was* a test of faith.
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| How Come... | Dec 2nd. at 11:13:37 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
that when they wish to test a faith, it is rarely their own lives they put on the line?
I believe that if they choose not to seek a doctor, that is their business, but a child is too young to understand and should not be subject to that until they are old enough to make their own decisions.
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| If This Gets Successfully Appealed... | Dec 2nd. at 10:23:55 pm EST
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Keyra (Plano, Texas) - Email Me
...then I can see someone "dashing their child's heads against the stones" for disobedience being a matter of acquittal as it states in the Bible that it is permissible. Furthermore, stoning a prostitute to death, or for that matter, "not permitting a witch to live"...
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| Bottom Line | Dec 2nd. at 9:01:24 pm EST
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WitchPoet (Claremont, California) - Email Me - Web
They put somone ELSE's life on the line for THEIR belief resulting in death.
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