Faith healing parents convicted of homicide for daughter's death from untreated diabetes lose appeal for new trials

Wausau Daily Herald   -  Wisconsin     April 28, 2011

Judge Vincent Howard denies appeals of Dale and Leilani Neumann in prayer death convictions



The Weston parents convicted of second degree reckless homicide in the death of their daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann have lost their appeal for new trials. Marathon County Judge Vincent Howard ruled this afternoon to deny the post-conviction motions of Dale and Leilani Neumann.

Kara died March 23, 2008, from complications of undiagnosed diabetes while the Neumanns, who believe in faith healing, prayed for the girl's recovery.

Dale Neumann argued he should get a new trial because jurors in his prayer-death trial could have been biased after learning that his wife was previously convicted in the case. Leilani also appealed on grounds she was improperly defended in a separate second-degree homicide trial in 2009.

Judge Howard, who oversaw the separate trials for Dale and Leilani, wrote that “hindsight” was not enough reason to overturn “strategic decisions” made by the couple’s attorneys.

Dale’s defense attorney and prosecutors came to a joint decision to inform the jury of Leilani’s prior conviction, rather than risk members of the jury who were unaware of the conviction finding out at trial, Howard wrote.

“It is admittedly extraordinary to actually inform potential jurors of a prior conviction of a co-defendant, but there is no real denying that these trials were also very extraordinary,” Howard wrote.

Leilani’s argument that her trial attorney should have put stronger emphasis on her sincere belief that prayer is a form of treatment also was rejected by Howard. The judge wrote that attorney Gene Linehan had to make a quick decision during his closing argument, following prosecutors’ attempt to portray Leilani as a “religious extremist.”

“Hindsight can sometimes reveal places where there is room for improvement,” Howard wrote. “Trial counsel certainly could have better explained and emphasized the sincere belief defense...but room for improvement is not the same as deficient performance.”

Steve Miller, Dale Neumann’s attorney, said this afternoon that he hadn’t seen the decision yet and declined comment. A message left with Leilani Neumann’s attorney was not immediately returned.

Both Dale and Leilani Neumann were sentenced in October 2009 to six months in jail, 10 years probation and 120 hours of community service. Howard delayed the jail terms pending appeals.

They are also required to have their remaining juvenile children regularly examined by health officials.

Marathon County Assistant District Attorney LaMont Jacobson, who tried both Neumann cases, said his office was “certainly pleased with the outcome.”

The Neumanns’ attorneys raised some issues that “were troubling,” particularly the jury being informed of Leilani’s prior conviction, Jacobson said.

“We were all in a position where we had to balance (Dale’s) right to a fair trial, to a speedy trial and his right to have the trial occur in Marathon County,” Jacobson said. “And it was all with the backdrop of Leilani’s conviction.”

Jacobson said he suspects both Dale and Leilani Neumann will appeal Howard’s decision to the Court of Appeals, where the prosecution will be represented by the state attorney general’s office.


This article was found at:


http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20110428/WDH0101/110428143/Judge-denies-Neumann-appeals-prayer-death-convictions


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New York Times - January 20, 2009

by Dirk Johnson

WESTON, Wis. — Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.

Butch McCartney/Wassau Daily Herald, via Associated Press Kara Neumann months before she died at age 11. Her parents, who prayed but did not seek medical care when she was ill, are charged with reckless endangerment.

After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The condition occurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.
“Basically everything stops,” said Dr. Louis Philipson, who directs the diabetes center at the University of Chicago Medical Center, explaining what occurs in patients who do not know or “are in denial that they have diabetes.”
About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that the charges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, Judge Vincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to stand trial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23. If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.
“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.”
Wisconsin law, he noted, exempts a parent or guardian who treats a child with only prayer from being criminally charged with neglecting child welfare laws, but only “as long as a condition is not life threatening.” Kara’s parents, Judge Howard wrote, “were very well aware of her deteriorating medical condition.”
About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years after medical care was withheld on religious grounds, said Rita Swan, executive director of Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty, a group based in Iowa that advocates punishment for parents who do not seek medical help when their children need it. Criminal codes in 30 states, including Wisconsin, provide some form of protection for practitioners of faith healing in cases of child neglect and other matters, protection that Ms. Swan’s group opposes.
Shawn Peters, the author of three books on religion and the law, including “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law” (Oxford, 2007), said the outcome of the Neumann case was likely to set an important precedent.
“The laws around the country are pretty unsettled,” said Mr. Peters, who teaches religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and has been consulted by prosecutors and defense lawyers in the case.
In the last year, two other sets of parents, both in Oregon, were criminally charged because they had not sought medical care for their children on the ground that to do so would have violated their belief in faith healing. One couple were charged with manslaughter in the death of their 15-month-old daughter, who died of pneumonia last March. The other couple were charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, who died from complications of a urinary tract infection that was severely painful and easily treatable.
“Many types of abuses of children are motivated by rigid belief systems,” including severe corporal punishment, said Ms. Swan, a former Christian Scientist whose 16-month-old son, Matthew, died after she postponed taking him to a hospital for treatment of what proved to be meningitis. “We learned the hard way.”
All states give social service authorities the right to go into homes and petition for the removal of children, Ms. Swan said, but cases involving medical care often go unnoticed until too late. Parents who believe in faith healing, she said, may feel threatened by religious authorities who oppose medical treatment. Recalling her own experience, she said, “we knew that once we went to the doctor, we’d be cut off from God.”
The crux of the Neumanns’ case, Mr. Peters said, will be whether the parents could have known the seriousness of their daughter’s condition.
Investigators said the Neumanns last took Kara to a doctor when she was 3. According to a police report, the girl had lost the strength to speak the day before she died. “Kara laid down and was unable to move her mouth,” the report said, “and merely made moaning noises and moved her eyes back and forth.”
The courts have ordered regular medical checks for the couple’s other three children, ages 13 to 16, and Judge Howard ordered all the parties in the case not to speak to members of the news media. Neither Ms. Falstad nor the defense lawyers, Gene Linehan and Jay Kronenwetter, would agree to be interviewed.
The Neumanns, who had operated a coffee shop, Monkey Mo’s, in this middle-class suburb in the North Woods, are known locally as followers of an online faith outreach group called Unleavened Bread Ministries, run by a preacher, David Eells. The site shares stories of faith healing and talks about the end of the world.
An essay on the site signed Pastor Bob states that the Bible calls for healing by faith alone. “Jesus never sent anyone to a doctor or a hospital,” the essay says. “Jesus offered healing by one means only! Healing was by faith.”
A link from the site, helptheneumanns.com, asserts that the couple is being persecuted and “charged with the crime of praying.” The site also allows people to contribute to a legal fund for the Neumanns.
In the small town of Weston, many people shake their heads with dismay when Kara Neumann is mentioned. Tammy Klemp, 41, who works behind the counter at a convenience store here, said she disagreed with the Neumanns’ passive response to their daughter’s illness but said she was not sure they should go to prison.
“I’ve got mixed feelings,” Ms. Klemp said. “It’s just such a terribly sad case.”
Chris Goebel, 30, a shipping department worker for a window maker, said many people in the area felt strongly that the parents should be punished.
“That little girl wasn’t old enough to make the decision about going to a doctor,” Mr. Goebel said. “And now, because some religious extremists went too far, she’s gone.”
This article was found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/21faith.html

Law Sanctifies Child Homicide in Name of Faith

Freedom From Religion Foundation

March 28, 2008

Memorialize 11-Year-Old Madeline by Removing Faith Exemption


As a memorial to the painful, frightening and needless death of Madeline Kara Neumann, the Wisconsin Legislature needs to finally show some gumption, and remove from the statutes its exemption sanctifying child homicide in the name of faith.

Statement by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor
Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-Presidents

The death of an 11-year-old child from illness is always tragic, but what puts Madeline Kara Neumann's death last Sunday in a different class is that it is unforgiveable. Madeleine's long descent into diabetic ketoacidosis was unnecessary, preventable and the result of willful negligence on the part of her bible-believing parents.

It's one thing for an adult to choose prayer over medicine. But it is sheer child sacrifice to permit parents to eschew medical diagnosis and treatment of ill offspring. Parents do not own their children, much less have the right to endanger their children's lives by callously disregarding medical needs in the name of religion.

What's even more appalling is the ambivalent reaction: "Ethicists say case unclear," reports the Wausau Daily Herald. The Herald quoted bioethicist Dr. Norman Fost of the University of Wisconsin Medical school warning that it's important not to be moralistic or pass judgment on parents who think they can heal a child through prayer: "They believe they're helping their child; they love their child, and they believe prayer has an effect."

However deluded the parents may be, the rest of us need not countenance or indulge that dangerous delusion.

Dean Zuleger, the administrator of the Village of Weston, was quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying, "There is a general sense of grief and sadness. Because I know the family a bit, there is a great deal of concern for their well-being." The parents' well-being?

"Death draws out difficult issues" read a headline in the Journal Sentinel. While Madeline's drawn-out death, involving nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, weight loss and weakness, is very difficult to read about, there is nothing difficult at all about deciding where the blame lies. "The prayer of faith will heal the sick," according to James 5:15. The fault lies in society's laudatory attitude toward a "holy book" which teaches superstition and faith-healing, whose passages are latched onto by bible literalists, and whose obedience to such injunctions has been given a pass in the criminal statutes of many states.

The mother, Leilani Neumann, of Weston, Wis., publicly announced: "We need healing. We are going through the healing process." What about the healing process her daughter required? This helpless dependent of a middle-class family had last seen a doctor at the age of three, and recently had been pulled out of public schools for religious home-schooling, possibly to cover up symptoms of her illness, which, according to medical experts, would have surfaced at least six months ago.

Legally, the question will revolve over whether the family recognized the seriousness of the illness. A chronology has emerged which belies the family's claim that they did not realize how sick Madeline was, including logs of their calls around the country to relatives (who notified authorities just before her death that Madeline was seriously ill) and to David Eels, whose Unleavened Bread Ministries operates AmericasLastDays.com. Eels, of Pensacola, Fla., admitted he prayed for Madeline the day before she died, and that the family phoned him Sunday, as they followed an ambulance with their dead daughter to the hospital, asking him "if I would pray that the Lord would spare her and raise her up, which I did."

Leilani Neumann told reporters she and her husband are not worried about an investigation because "our lives are in God's hands. We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do."

Their "best" was not good enough. Nor is the religious exemption provided for by Wisconsin statutes, similar to what many states have adopted under pressure of the Christian Science lobby. What they don't realize is that doing nothing to help their daughter is parental negligence, which is criminal. The parents can still be charged, at least with some form of negligence or child abuse. But more action is required.

As a memorial to the painful, frightening and needless death of Madeline Kara Neumann, the Wisconsin Legislature needs to finally show some gumption, and remove from the statutes its callous exemption sanctifying child homicide in the name of faith.

This article was found at:

http://ffrf.org/news/2008/
faithexemption.php

Charges possible in diabetes death

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

March 28, 2008

Parents had not taken daughter, 11, to doctor since she was 3, police say

By BILL GLAUBER

Weston - A local police official said Friday that charges are possible against the parents of Madeline Kara Neumann, the 11-year-old girl who died of complications from untreated diabetes. "If we didn't believe at the end of our investigation there (would) be charges, then our investigation would have ended a lot sooner," Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.

He said his department will likely complete its investigation by early next week and that ultimately it will be up to the Marathon County district attorney to determine what charges, if any, could be filed in a case that has received national attention.

"Our feeling is it was an unnecessary death," Vergin said. "After everything else is said and done, it was unnecessary for the 11-year-old to die. She could have easily been treated and had a long, loving life here on Earth."

Lesli Pluster, an assistant district attorney, said the case "is still considered under investigation."

Dale and Leilani Neumann had not taken their daughter to a doctor since she was 3 years old, police said. Leilani Neumann has said the family does not belong to any organized religion or faith but believes in the Bible and that healing comes from God.

The girl died Sunday of diabetic ketoacidosis, a treatable though serious condition of type 1 diabetes in which acid builds up in the blood.

Earlier this week, police executed a search warrant on the Neumanns' home and took away medications, medical books, bedding, religious books, videos and pamphlets, as well as diaries and computer equipment.

Among the items taken by police from the home were eight Blue Cross HMO cards for the family, according to an inventory. The record didn't indicate whether the cards were still valid or had expired.

The book "Sovereign God," by David Eells, and several CDs by Eells were also taken. Eells is the founder of the Web site AmericasLastDays.com and Unleavened Bread Ministries. Leilani Neumann has written two posts on the Web site, and she and her husband had twice prayed over the telephone with Eells in the waning hours of Kara's life.

Other books included "Handbook for Healing," "God's Chosen Fast," "90 Minutes in Heaven," "Dear God Prayer Book" and a medical and first-aid book.

The request for the search warrant included new details of the case. The girl was known as Kara to family and friends, but she is referred to as Madeline in the official documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel.
Grandmother concerned

Evalani Gordon, the girl's grandmother, told an investigator that her granddaughter had been ill for one to 1 ½ weeks and reported that "Madeline was very tired and wanted to be held by mom."

She said three to four days before her granddaughter's death, "the girl only wanted to lie down and do homework from her bed." By Saturday, when the girl was unable to walk or talk, the grandmother, who lives out of state, told Leilani Neumann to take Madeline to a doctor, the document says.

"Leilani Neumann told Evalani Gordon that Madeline would be fine and God would heal her," according to the document.

On Sunday, Gordon spoke with Leilani Neumann and discovered the girl was in a coma. Gordon then contacted a daughter-in-law, Ariel Ness, who lives in California. Ness then called the Marathon County Dispatch Center.

Ness later contacted the dispatch center to inform authorities that "water may have been poured down the girl's throat," the document says.

Marathon County Medical Examiner John Larson said that the girl "was found to be in an emaciated state," according to the document.
Appeared malnourished

In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, Larson said, "I think it's probably safe to say she was gaunt, drawn, extremely slender. She certainly had an appearance of malnutrition and dehydration."

According to the Web site of the American Diabetes Association, the body burns fat to get energy in ketoacidosis.

Vergin also provided other details of the case in an interview. He said the Neumanns' three other children were at the home as well as Althea and Randall Wormgoor, friends of the couple. The Wormgoors spoke on the phone during a 911 call from the home Sunday.

Vergin said when authorities arrived at the home, "the copper just scooped the child up and ran out to the ambulance."

Friday, a friend of the family answered the door at the Neumanns' home and said the family was not interested in talking.

Vergin said on Friday the three other Neumann children were staying with extended family outside Marathon County under an agreement reached by the Neumanns and authorities. The children had been in the custody of the Marathon County Department of Social Services. Vergin said the children had been questioned by authorities and given medical checkups.

This story was found at:

http://www.jsonline.com/story/
index.aspx?id=733395