This makes me sad and angry. You can choose to be vegan, that's fine with me, but a newborn baby needs the nutrients that only animal products can provide; why would anyone knowingly deprive their child of what he needs to survive?

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News ... 53,00.html

Atlanta - A vegan couple was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison in the death of their malnourished six-week-old, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soymilk and apple juice.

Judge LA McConnell imposed the sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31, for starving the boy, who weighed just 1.6kg when he died.

Six-week-old Crown Shakur died of starvation April 25 2004.

His parents attributed his emaciated state to their strict vegan diet. Vegans are people who do not eat or use any animal products.

The couple was 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.

Defence 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 realise the baby, who was born at home, was in danger until minutes before he died.

But prosecutor Mike Carlson told the jury during closing arguments: "They're not vegans. They're baby killers!"

So the prosecutors argued that they starved the baby maliciously?

Um. Seriously?

Anyway, about the whole vegan thing. I wonder if vegan parents reject the whole idea of breast milk.

oh no, 2pac was reincarnated and they starved him

Seriously, morons like this give all you good vegans a bad name.

involuntary manslaughter sounds like the only legit charge here. I wonder if this is seen as more malicious, than say, a religious group who won't take their baby to the doctor.

Based on the little bit of info i have on this case, it certainly doesn't sound as malicious as the scenario you've described. This seems more like a case of horribly misguided ignorance and doesn't really come off as being an malicious act.

I think certain groups still have an unwaivering sense of reverence when it comes to respecting differences in religion as opposed to respecting differences in lifestyle choices.

I wondered about the whole breast milk thing too, and I decided they must still view that as an animal product and it must not be right for anyone to consume it. If this is the case, then these two morons are even dumber than I thought.

Huh?

A baby does need breast milk from mother, which is an "animal product" if that's what you're referring to. However aside from that, there is absolutely no need for any other "animal products" to be consumed by a newborn.

I think that was the intention, but anyhoo...
Do formulas usually contain animal products or are there soy based or other products that meet the same nutritional requirements as baby formula?

I do know that babies need more than soy milk and apple juice. These morons belong in jail.

Vegans can be fucking retards. There was an issue here where some vegans were only feeding their kid rice and soy milk and the County child services took the kid away and locked up the stupid ass parents.

yeah, that was what I was referring to, sorry if it wasn't terribly clear.

Well, I think they should probably have realized their baby wasn't growing or something... Yeah, I don't know about malicious... Don't they have things like negligent homicide for things like this?

malice can be defined as a reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life and it can be express or implied. Another way of saying it is that malice exists when an individual's acts are gross departure from a reasonable standard of care to the point that a jury/judge can infer that the individual was aware of a serious risk of death or serious bodily harm. It's kind of a mix between a subjective and objective standard of care - the objective element is the standard of care and the subjective is the individual's awareness of their departure from that standard.

so, the parents weren't trying/intending to kill the baby, but their conduct was such that they could reasonably anticipate that their child would die because of it (or, the prosecutor was able to convince the jury of it)

negligent homicide - or involuntary manslaughter - is more appropriate in cases where an individual deviates from the standard of care without the subjective awareness of their deviation. for example, if the baby in this case had small infection in his mouth that didn't seem that bad at first, but continued to worsen to the point of becoming gangrenous and causing death (this is from a real case) while the parents (who are well below average intelligence and have a genuine fear that bringing their child to the hospital will result in the state taking him away because they're also poor and Native American) are trying to treat the infection with aspirin and completely unaware that it will end up killing the kid. the parents had no subjective - or reckless - deviation from the standard of care, but any reasonable person in that situation would have taken the kid to a doctor at that point.