I thought this was horrible . What is your input ?
How do you not know something is wrong when a 6week old weighs only 3
1/2 lb.s ???



A vegan couple were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the death
of their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely
consisting of soy milk and apple juice.
Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell imposed the mandatory sentences on
Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur,
weighed just 3 1/2 pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004.

The couple were found guilty May 2 of malice murder, felony murder,
involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. A jury deliberated
about seven hours before returning the guilty verdicts.

Defense lawyers said the first-time parents did the best they could
while adhering to the lifestyle of vegans, who typically use no animal
products. They said Sanders and Thomas did not realize the baby, who was
born at home, was in danger until minutes before he died.

But prosecutors said the couple intentionally neglected their child and
refused to take him to the doctor even as the baby's body wasted away.

"No matter how many times they want to say, 'We're vegans, we're
vegetarians,' that's not the issue in this case," said prosecutor Chuck
Boring. "The child died because he was not fed. Period."

Although the life sentences were automatic, Sanders and Thomas begged
for leniency before sentencing. Sanders urged the judge to look past his
"perception" of the couple.

"I loved my son--and I did not starve him," she said.

When the judge told the defendants they could ask for a new trial,
Thomas hung his head low.

"I'm dying every day in there," he said, "and that could take three
years."

There is such a thing as soy formula! I still don't understand what the
parents' defense was.

i'm a complete vegetarian, and so are my children...

um...breast milk? soy formula if that doesn't work? and...apple juice
to a six-week-old?



so sad...and this is going to harm the vegetarian/vegan movement...they
are right, this has NOTHING to do with food-choice, and everything to do
with the ignorance of the parents.

where were the support for this family? family? doctors?

My baby was born at 28 weeks. He weighed a bit under 3lbs. He also spent
over a month in the NICU. There is NO excuse for this. I say let the
parents STARVE TO DEATH IN PRISON. They deserve it!

I was wondering the same thing lulu I think this comes down to ignorance
not the diet . Apparently they had no help or surely someone would have
noticed there was a problem .

They make tons of soy based formulas, some babies are lactous
intolerant...ahh, grrrr. & Giving juice to a 6 week old? wow.

Are vegans against breast milk, too? Really, Im just wondering...

Too bad anyone can have kids, eh?

vegans are against animal foods...anything that comes from an animal.
we mostly adhere to this...but i must say that i like my honey.

as long as you aren't having your dog nurse your kid...and it's from
your own breast...it conforms.

Yeah there definately needs to be a screening process for
breeding...lol.

While I lived in Humboldt County, CA (lots of "hippies"), I worked at a
preschool. During the year I worked there I definately noticed a
diference in health between kids who ate "normal" and those who were
vegan... vegan kids were toward the bottom of the percentile in weight,
and seemed to be sick a lot more than those who were not vegans...

Now, I'm not saying this is true everywhere... it's just my observations
as a teacher in a specific area.

my children are big and healthy...my 11-year-old has never been sick in
her entire life, literally. she was on antibiotics one time for an
infection in her side, and that's it.

any lifestyle is unhealthy if you don't take the time to learn about
it...and to apply it. i know many vegetarians that think that they can
live off of french fries, and that's just not enough.

Lulu Wrote:
"this has NOTHING to do with food-choice, and everything to do
with the ignorance of the parents."

I have to agree with this.

The prosecution is basically saying the same thing:

"No matter how many times they want to say, 'We're vegans, we're
vegetarians,' that's not the issue in this case," said prosecutor Chuck
Boring. "The child died because he was not fed. Period."

There's much more to the case, than merely the fact that the parents
were vegans. Obviously they neglected the child.

However, things could be much more complicated than this!

It is possible that the child simply had some weird rare kind of disease
that affects the metabolic system.

I remember hearing about one case where a woman keep bringing her kid to
the hospital and the doctors discovered that it had been poisoned! The
first time they figured it was probably accidental. But it happened
repeatedly so social workers removed the child from the mother and the
mother was sentenced to prison for poisoning her baby.

The child was placed in a foster home.

But then the child got sick and the foster parents took the child to the
hospital to discover it had been poisoned again!

As it turned out the child had some really weird condition that caused
it’s very own metabolism to create the poison. It was an internal
medical problem of that child. Extremely rare, but evidently not
completely unheard of in the medical community.

The mother was finally released from prison and her child returned to
her care.

I’m not saying that’s the case here. But it is quite possible that the
parents are innocent. It could simply be that the child’s system
couldn’t handle the diet (a diet that would normally be handled by most
people).

I have no clue about the details of the case. But it would seem to me
that the prosecution would be hard pressed to prove negligence simply
based solely on the end result. I mean, it seems to me that he would
need to establish deliberate negligence on the part of the parents. Or
at least have some strong reasons to accuse them of negligence. The
death of the child alone does not prove negligence.

Life imprisonment is a hell of a punishment to put onto someone who
might not be guilty of doing anything wrong.

I'd have to hear testimony from people who knew the parents and
suggested neglegent behavior because I could convict them. I certainly
couldn't find them guilty based on what I've heard thus far.

Most people who choose not to include animals, or their by products, in
their diet are extremely conscious of thier body's well being, and their
childrens needs to live healthily.

My children were not raised with my beliefs, nor my decisions to not eat
meat. I do use milk for some things, most times, soy, I do eat organic
non fertilised eggs, I do eat cheese that is not made with rennet....and
I am rarely sick..

My children are raised with their well being paramount, and they do
understand where what they put in their mouths come from, so they can
make informed decisions on what they eat.

My children are rarely ill, my youngest has a cold at the moment,
(change of season)and a town full of holiday makers, with their bugs we
have not been exposed to..and it is natural and necessary to build
immunity.

I feel most parents who choose a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle do so from
an informed position and with their children's health and well being
paramount.

These people seem to have not been well informed, and I am curious to
know their ages. Also more of their history, and whether the baby was
given follow on care after it's birth, and why was it removed from
their care at six weeks, and not earlier?

because I could convict them

mean to say: 'before' I could convict them.

ok ages are there, 27 and 31....fascinating..I had hoped they at least
had youth and inexperience in obtaining support and services...

Exactly... many of our parents were young, so they probably were not
following a healthy vegan diet... but it was quite sad because I did
bring it up to a couple of parents and they said they knew what was
best...

I sure hope to God, someone with more knowledge helped them get a
balanced/nutritional vegan diet going....

Every vegan I've known has said that a mother's milk is the best food
for a baby (barring certain medical conditions).

But there -are- wing nuts out there in the world, wing nuts in every
group. So there's probably some wing nuts who call themselves vegan who
believe they shouldn't give their child breast milk because its not
'vegan' - but that has -nothing- to do with real veganism.

Oh... didn't refresh my page before posting.

Stuff like this sucks for me being a teacher though... by LAW I am
required to report ANY and ALL signs of malnutrition, abuse or
neglect....

ah, again the teacher is responsible for all...

Another article about this case .....

A vegan couple accused of starving their infant to death were hammered
with a malice
murder conviction Wednesday, the same charge the defendants would have
faced had they put a gun to their child's temple and pulled the trigger.

Fulton prosecutor Chuck Boring said the precedent-setting verdict isn't
a condemnation of veganism, a strict form of vegetarianism that does not
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.

The infant was born in the bathtub of a Buckhead apartment, but never
taken to a doctor. The 6-week-old was dead when his parents took him to
Piedmont Hospital, across the street from their apartment, on April 25,
2004. He weighed 3 1/2 pounds and was so emaciated that doctors could
count his bones through his skin.

This is the first known verdict of its kind in Georgia. A New York jury
also 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 Atlanta mother, Jade Sanders, 27, initially told police she fed her
baby organic apple juice and soy milk. But the soy milk containers in
her Buckhead apartment clearly state that soy milk is not to be used as
a substitute for baby formula, her lawyer admitted.

At trial, the mother said she also fed her son breast milk and soy milk
formula.

The father, Lamont Thomas, 31, buried his face in his hands at the
defense table after hearing the verdicts that would send him and his
girlfriend to prison with automatic life sentences. The judge might tack
on more prison time at a sentence hearing next week.

The courtroom was so quiet after the judge read the rare verdict that
the clank of the handcuffs a deputy fastened around the couple's wrists
echoed throughout the room.

"We're going to jail for no reason," the father told visiting senior
Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell before being led out of the
courtroom by deputies. "We didn't starve our son for weeks and weeks."

Sanders' and Thomas' mothers sat silently, wiping at tears.

Thomas' attorney, Brandon Lewis, turned to the moms and vowed to appeal:
"I want you to remember, it's far from being over."

Outside the courtroom, Lewis said he believes the parents
unintentionally starved their child by giving him apple juice, which
worked 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 still
should 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 this
case. "I'll never understand why," he said.

I don't agree with your last statement teacher...



You are another pair of eyes, a protector, a guardian angel at times to
children who don't have a voice....

please dont say it sucks...I would rather be wrong a thousand times,
than have one child suffering in silence.

i will add, on a side-note...that there are conditions that may appear
as mal-nutrition or failure-to-thrive. my littlest daughter's medical
condition does not allow her to gain much weight. i remember the health
department trying to tell me that i had to take nutrition classes
because putting her height and weight on a chart stuck her in the fifth
percentile. she was in the 95th for height, and the 25th for
weight...but taken together, they didn't look quite as well.

i had to have her doctor fax the information about her being hypotonic
and not possessing muscle tone...

three pounds, however...jeesh, that's a pretty small baby. here, you
have a baby...you take it in at three days, again at two weeks...again
at a month...and on and on.

of course, it did say they had that baby at home.