Murder verdict for vegan parents
By BETH WARREN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/03/07
A vegan couple committed murder when they didn't make sure their newborn received proper nutrition, a Fulton jury decided Wednesday.
The courtroom was so quiet after the judge read the verdict ? the first of its kind in Georgia ? that the clank of the handcuffs being fastened around the parents' wrists echoed through the room.
The father, Lamont Thomas, 31, then called out "We're going to jail for no reason" as his girlfriend, Jade Sanders, 27, stared ahead, visibly stunned.
Thomas told visiting Senior Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell that he and Sanders were proud of their first child, naming him Crown. "We didn't starve our son for weeks and weeks," the dad said before deputies led him out of the courtroom.
The verdicts mean the couple will receive automatic life sentences. The judge might tack on more prison time at a sentencing hearing next week...
...The infant was born in the bathtub of a Buckhead apartment but never taken to a doctor while alive. He was dead when his parents took him to Piedmont Hospital, across the street from their apartment, April 25, 2004. At six weeks old he weighed just 3 1/2 pounds and was so emaciated, doctors could count his bones through his skin.
Fulton prosecutor Chuck Boring said the verdict isn't a condemnation of veganism, a strict form of vegetarianism that doesn't allow the consumption or use of animal products. Instead, jurors believed prosecutors' assertions that the couple intentionally neglected and underfed the child and then tried to use the lifestyle as a shield.
n similar cases, a New York jury convicted a vegan couple on murder charges in the death of their child, but a Florida jury was more lenient, acquitting vegan parents of murder and instead convicting them on reduced charges of involuntary manslaughter, an unintentional death. In that case, the couple had successfully raised two children as vegans, but their third child died.
"The vegan diet is fine," Boring said after the verdict in the Georgia case. "These parents lied about what they fed him. He just was not fed enough."
The mother initially told police she fed her baby organic apple juice and soy milk. But the soy milk containers in her apartment clearly state that soy milk is not to be used as a substitute for baby formula, her lawyer admitted. At trial, the mom said she also fed her son breast milk and soy milk formula.
Outside the courtroom, Lewis, the defense attorney, said he believes the parents unintentionally starved their child by feeding him apple juice that may have acted as a diuretic and blocked the absorption of nutrients from the soy milk, soy formula and breast milk. They never took Crown to a doctor because they feared hospitals were infested with germs, he said...