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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Thu May 3 18:23:43 2007
edf40wrjww2msgDetailOT:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is just sick. And they still insist they didn't starve the baby? and dare to even appeal? Monstrous.
Murder verdict for vegan parentsBy 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.
Jade Sanders
Lamont Thomas
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.
After hearing the verdicts, Sanders' and Thomas' mothers sat silently, wiping at tears. They remembered a grandson who smiled and laughed and didn't cry any more than any other child, said Thomas' attorney, Brandon Lewis.
Lewis turned to the defendants' moms and vowed to appeal: "I want you to remember, it's far from being over."
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.
In 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.
At trial, government witness and vegan expert Amy Lanou told jurors the child's health may have been compromised by his diet, but he should still have been alive if fed enough food.
Lanou, a nutritionist who authored the book "Healthy Eating for Life for Children," on raising children as vegans, said all parents should know that babies need adequate amounts of breast milk or formula.
Prosecutors Boring and Mike Carlson convinced jurors that the neglect was intentional.
Boring said outside the courtroom that he'd always be haunted by the case. "I'll never understand 'Why?' " he said.
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