Vegan couple found guilty of killing their baby through a soy-only diet

by J.D. Griffioen (Subscribe to J.D. Griffioen's posts) May 4th 2007 12:27PM

Categories: Eating & Nutrition, Development

Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas are vegans, and they wanted to raise the infant born in their home under the strict principles of veganism. Sanders and Thomas must have skipped class the day they taught breastfeeding at hippie school, because their infant subsisted mostly on a diet of soy milk and apple juice for the first six weeks of his short life. When the infant died, he weighed just 3.5 pounds, and his parents were arrested on charges of murder and cruelty to children. Their defense lawyers argued that Sanders and Thomas were first time parents who "did the best they could while adhering to the vegan lifestyle." Lawyers also argued that Sanders and Thomas did not realize their tiny son was unhealthy or in any physical danger until minutes before he died.

Prosecutors didn't buy the ignorant hippie-dippy defense. He told jurors during Tuesday's closing arguments: "They're not vegans. They're baby killers!" After seven hours of deliberation, the fates of these two vegan parents were decided: guilty, and both face automatic life sentences. So Sanders and Thomas can spend the rest of their lives complaining about how difficult it is to maintain a vegan lifestyle in state prison. Thomas, I'm sure, will at least get the chance to toss a lot of salads.

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Comments (34)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Michelle 5-04-2007 @ 12:37PM

3.5 pounds? How could they not know that something was wrong?

Ethel 5-04-2007 @ 12:48PM

I guess when they decided on no animal products they were cognizant enough to recognize mom as being animal as well.

Sink or swim, evolution wins again.

Lauren 5-04-2007 @ 1:56PM

Who really thinks it is ok to give a newborn apple juice? Ridiculous.

Plenty of vegan families raise nourished, healthy children within their very strict eating principals. These people are guilty of abuse, and I am glad that some justice will be served for that poor baby.

Caelligh 5-04-2007 @ 2:02PM

Can you really call this murder, though? Doesn't that mean they INTENDED to kill their child? These parents sound like stubborn idiots, but not murderers.

This sounds like involuntary manslaughter: "where there is no intention to kill or cause serious injury but death is due to recklessness or criminal negligence." Lands you in prison for several years, but not life.

I wonder if their heavy sentence had anything to do with their race or their location in the South?

Marcia 5-04-2007 @ 2:11PM

Caelligh I half agree that they might not have intended to kill their son, but come on 3.5 lbs?? They HAD to have known something was wrong.

Why didn't they have a 1 month old baby check-up? and if they did, why wasn't this investigated BEFORE this happened?

As a side note, I'm so sick of the R card being played so dang often. I doubt it had anything to do with this case. Everytime something happens to a non-white person/family, someone thinks it's racially motivated.

Jessica 5-04-2007 @ 2:22PM

Yeah, and the whole "south" thing is irritating as well. This isn't 1907; in which time there was actually racism abundant in both the south AND the north.

I agree with the murder charge. Unless there is an IQ issue going on here, these people HAD to have known there was something amiss with a 3.5lb six-wk old.

Laura 5-04-2007 @ 2:24PM

I actually live in the area this occured and the baby was born in a homebirth and they fed him nothing but soy milk and apple juice. Their apartment complex is literally across the street from a hospital but they refused to take the baby because they felt that hospitals contained too many germs. Instead the baby was starved to death. When the baby was finally taken to the hospital because he was not breathing Doctors could see and count the child's bones through its skin because it was so gaunt. This was not adherence to a strict diet, this was child abuse, plain and simple. Race had nothing to do with it.

Jacinda 5-04-2007 @ 2:46PM

Caelligh - Enough with the white-guilt charade. Also, sometimes intent is imputed from the actions. In this case, a 3.5 lb baby signals a problem, and since the parents didn't heed the warning, the intent to murder may have been imputed. Caelligh hun, I believe you've been watching too many crime shows.

Sadie 5-04-2007 @ 3:03PM

This is a picture of 2 babies in Haiti that weighed in at 3lbs 5 ounces and 3lbs 8 ounces before being admitted to a hospital for ng feeding after their mother died:

http://xce.xanga.com/53dd520525131118419511/z85071337.jpg

You can NOT look at a baby like that and think it is normal or healthy. :(
That poor little baby.

Caelligh 5-04-2007 @ 5:03PM

*white flag* Truce! I wasn't trying to pick a fight over race, etc. The sentence struck me as heavy-handed and race was one possible factor that occurred to me.

The law DOES deal more harshly with minorities in general, but I can't judge whether that was the case here.

shetha 5-04-2007 @ 5:04PM

The premise of this being related to veganism is disturbing. If you truly understand being vegan then you'll realize that even though soy protein may contain dairy derivatives... breastmilk is vegan. Because it is given freely from the mother, it is consumable within a vegan diet. For vegans these folks sure didn't know a lot about being vegan. It doesn't seem like they new a lot about anything, actually. Sadly, their offspring bore the brunt of their ignorance.

jenn 5-04-2007 @ 5:17PM

i'm sorry 3.5 lbs at 6wks old. You have to notice something is not right and why were they giving this child soy milk instead of soy formula? there was no reason this child had to suffer like this.

jenn 5-04-2007 @ 5:27PM

i don't think the sentence was heavy handed at all. these people are guilty of neglect and hiding behind being vegan. you can be perfectly healthy when on a vegan diet even infants. maybe they should have tried soy FORMULA instead of soy milk

Stephanie 5-04-2007 @ 5:34PM

Most definitely neglect. Their excuse of being vegan or worried about germs in the hospital is no excuse to fail to get some sort of care for that child.

ivymae 5-04-2007 @ 10:37PM

In another article I read, they said that they had a veganism expert/nutritionist testify, and she said she was ashamed that they had used the defense of veganism. I have to agree. This feels like when cosleeping is blamed on a drunk jerk sleeping on their baby - a practice is not to blame when an individual chooses to be an idiot.

Poor kid.

Amy 5-06-2007 @ 8:25PM

It plainly says on the side of a soymilk carton "Not for use as infant formula". So in addition to not understanding how to be vegan or take care of a child, couldn't they read? Was their homebirth assisted by a midwife? Didn't they ever discuss infant care or nutrition with her? What a tragedy.

deniseandkidz 5-07-2007 @ 7:30AM

So sad, for the poor little soul.

momof3 5-09-2007 @ 4:37PM

it is just an awful story. it just kills me that we regulate so many things so strictly and we can't seem to find a way to help people be better parents. I just registered a car and you would have thought that this car being counted meant the difference between life and death for the state. The penalties for not registering the car were severe. You have to get a license to catch fish, kill deer, drive, etc----yet ANYONE can be a parent. something is wrong. we should find a way to make it mandatory to educate parents-to-be on issues like nutrition, anger, development, so that we can stop the cycle of starvation due to ignorance, abuse due to ignorance of babies and how difficult they can be, and intervention that is way too late for a child with developmental issues.

there is more to this story I fear--there just isn't any logic that they were just that dumb---if it was some deeply isolated family in the woods with no access to media--maybe--but no way--i think perhaps the murder charge is right--there was more intention than people think and that the veganism was just an easy excuse.

Jess 6-17-2007 @ 10:27PM

Seems to me that if America spent a whole lot of money on education, social support and free quality health care you might actually lift your social standards up a couple of notches. I am sure this is a novel concept but these things actually reduce poverty, racism and stupid things like accidentally killing your baby. It is about time America took some responsibility for the poor and disenfranchised citizens it claims to care so much about. Cheers

michelle 5-12-2007 @ 11:30AM

These people were not poor disenfranchised or anything but mental midgets. The lack of protein got to them and depleted their brain capacities. I would venture that the reason their child was so malnourished was because so were they. There is a right way to be a vegan and a wrong way to be a vegan. It is obvious that she did not have proper prenatal care. If their baby was 3.5 lbs then there is no way that he was even a healthy weight at birth! The rest just chalk up to the fact that they were irresponsible morons. There is no helping lack of brain power.

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