State v. McKown.

• Author: Hanley, Ruth Ann
• Position: Parents rely on spiritual treatment for diabetic child - Minnesota

HELD: Where the state has clearly expressed its intention to

permit good faith reliance on spiritual treatment and prayer as

an alternative to conventional medical care, it cannot, without

giving defendants fair notice of prohibited conduct, prosecute

them for a death caused by such reliance.

Ian Lundman, an eleven year old boy, died as a result of diabetic ketoacidosis. Although lan had been occasionally ill for several weeks and seriously ill for two or three days before his death, Kathleen and William McKown, lan's mother and stepfather, declined to seek medical intervention, relying instead on prayer and spiritual treatment for their son. The McKowns are Christian Scientists. State v. McKown, 475 N.W.2d 63 (Minn. 1992), cert. denied 60 U.S.L.W. 3478 (U.S. Jan. 14, 1992) (No. 91-862).

Four months after Lundman's death, a grand jury convened by the Hennepin County attorney indicted the McKowns. Physicians testifying before the grand jury as expert witnesses estimated that the child's condition could have been stabilized and his life saved by medical treatment as late as two hours before his death. The grand jury charged the McKowns under a Minnesota statute defining second degree manslaughter as "culpable negligence" whereby a person "creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another."

In the trial court the McKowns asserted in their defense a Minnesota child neglect statute that criminalized the intentional withholding of health care from children, but that also expressly recognized spiritual treatment and prayer as "health care." The McKowns argued that choosing spiritual means rather than medical care for healing lan therefore should not be considered criminal neglect when the parents relied in good faith on these methods and acted pursuant to the terms of the child neglect statute.

The trial court dismissed the indictments after concluding that the two statutes were in pari materia, that is, to be construed in reference to each other. Thus the spiritual means language in the child neglect statute was to be incorporated by reference as an exception to culpable negligence in the manslaughter statute, giving the McKowns a defense against the charge of second degree manslaughter. The trial court also ruled that the state could not enforce the manslaughter statute against the McKowns without violating their right to due process. The child neglect statute failed to notify persons...