Court to Rule on Spiritual Healing Deaths

A panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals has been asked to decide whether Christian Science parents can face criminal penalties if their children die after receiving only spiritual healing treatment for serious illness.

The panel heard arguments July 11 in St. Paul on an appeal by Hennepin County of an April ruling by Hennepin County Judge Eugene Farrell that dismissed second-degree manslaughter charges against a Christian Science couple in the death of Ian Douglass Lundman.

The 11-year-old boy’s mother and stepfather, Kathleen and William McKown, were indicted after he died of insulin deficiency May 9, 1989, in the couple’s Independence, Minn., home. Before his death, the boy had been sick with flu-like symptoms for three days. The government claimed that by relying only on prayer to cure the boy’s illness, the couple had negligently caused his death by creating an unreasonable risk.

Farrell dismissed the charges on grounds that parents who rely on spiritual healing for their children’s health care can’t be punished for criminal child neglect when that care is less than successful.

Hennepin County Atty. Tom Johnson told the appeals panel that while the parents’ religious beliefs have absolute protection under the law, their actions do not.