Central dilemma facing courts in spiritual healing death cases where defendants mount a mens rea defense

“on the one hand, sincere Bible-reading parents, believing that God would heal their sick children, did not intend knowingly or recklessly to cause their deaths. On the other hand, the state viewed the parents’ conduct as a deviation from an objective standard of reasonable care, since they did not act in a timely manner to prevent their children’s deaths . . . In light of the difficulties of a subjective religious defense, the state must maintain an objective standard of reasonable parental care, imposing a duty of seeking medical treatment in life-threatening conditions in their children. What the ordinarily prudent parent would do is an issue for a jury to determine” (Hughes, 246-247). In 2001, Randy & Colleen Bates of Colorado’s Church of the Firstborn pled no contest to criminally negligent child abuse causing death. Their 3-year-old daughter Amanda died by diabetes and gangrene; shortly before her death, she was bleeding from every bodily orifice, had a yeast infection, and pneumonia (Hughes, 263-264).