Justices to Hear Faith-Healing Cases Fatal to 2

Stepping into an emotional conflict of criminal laws and religious rights, the state Supreme Court granted hearings Thursday to Christian Science parents whose children died while being treated by prayer.

Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justices Stanley Mosk, Joseph Grodin, Allen Broussard and Cruz Reynoso, one more than the majority needed on the seven-member court, voted to hear the appeals of parents in Sacramento and Sonoma counties who are charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Ruling Voided

The action voids a ruling by the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento that said prosecution was not barred by a state law recognizing treatment by prayer as the legal equivalent of conventional medical treatment in some instances.

The high court will decide whether the law prohibits prosecution of the parents and, if so, whether the law gives unconstitutional preference to religious groups, as the state attorney general’s office argues.

In the Sacramento case, Laurie Walker called in a Christian Science practitioner after her 4-year-old daughter, Shauntay, showed symptoms of the flu in February, 1984. The practitioner and a Christian Science nurse attended and prayed for the girl, but she died of meningitis.

In the Sonoma County case, 8-month-old Natalie Middleton-Rippberger of Healdsburg died last December, two weeks after she showed flu symptoms and her parents, Mark Rippberger and Susan Middleton, called Christian Science practitioners and nurses for prayer treatment.

The parents contend they are innocent of any crime because of a 1976 state law, sponsored by the Christian Science Church, that gave legal recognition to certain types of faith healing. The law said that a parent who provided a minor child with “treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone, in accordance with the tenets and practices of a recognized church or religious denomination, by a duly accredited practitioner,” fulfilled the legal duty to provide “other remedial care.”

Not a Substitute

The appellate court, ruling in the Walker case, said the duty to provide “other remedial care” is in addition to, and not a substitute for, the duty to provide basic “medical attendance.”

The court did not address the attorney general’s argument that the 1976 law would be unconstitutional if it barred prosecution of parents in faith-healing cases.

Lawyers for the parents counter that the law had a non-religious purpose, to promote health through alternative means, and that the attorney general’s argument to the contrary reveals religious bias.

In another case, the high court ruled Thursday that police do not need a warrant to search the homes and other property of parolees, while in the same case it reversed the defendant’s death sentence.

Sentence Overturned

By a 5-1 vote, the court overturned the sentence of Michael Ray Burgener for the October, 1980, murder of a 7-Eleven store clerk in Riverside. The court found that the defense lawyer should have presented evidence on Burgener’s behalf during the penalty trial.

Burgener had ordered his attorney not to present evidence on his behalf and demanded in a statement to jurors that he be sentenced to death.

“Defense counsel and his client threw in the towel at the penalty phase, inviting the jury to impose the death penalty,” Justice Joseph R. Grodin said in the majority opinion. “In addition, the jury was in effect told (by the judge) that it must impose the death penalty under the circumstances.”

Reversed 53 of 56

The court has reversed 53 of 56 death penalty cases it has decided since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.

Although Burgener must be returned for a new penalty trial, the court did uphold his murder conviction.

Police obtained approval from Burgener’s parole agent to search his apartment the day of his arrest. There officers found a bag from the store containing two $5 bills.

The court upheld the legality of the search, even though police did not have a warrant signed by a judge. The justices said “societal interest in parole supervision and the speedy return of parole violators to prison” is more important than a parolee’s claimed right against unreasonable searches.