You get the idea from the headline: Baby Dies After Couple Chooses Prayer Over Medicine They let her die of bacterial meningitis in July 2001 after suffering high fever, convulsions and pain in the five days before her death. Their “Upland’s Church of God” is one that “shuns doctor intervention”. But they plead no contest to charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse, and “are to be sentenced to a year in jail and five years of probation, but allowed to serve their jail time on weekends instead of continuously” under an agreement with Judge Gerard Brown.

Why so light? According to the DA: “It’s not a case where they beat the kid or physically harmed the kid,” Maxwell said. “They wanted the kid to get better. They prayed the child would get better. You don’t have the typical intent that you would in a child abuse case where they are beaten or assaulted.” And as the public defender says: “These are good folks… It’s very unfortunate that they ended up here.”

No, it’s unfortunate that the kid got sick. It’s murderous that they let her suffer terribly and then die when all they needed to do was go to a fucking hospital.