Faith-healing couple charged in baby's death due in court today
Herbert and Catherine Schaible, who put prayer over medicine, have lost two children to preventable illness, authorities say.
THE "FAITH-HEALING" parents who were charged with third-degree murder Wednesday for not seeking medical care for their bacterial pneumonia-stricken baby will learn this morning if they'll get bail or remain behind bars.
At a 1 a.m. arraignment yesterday, Herbert and Catherine Schaible were granted bail at $250,000 each. But in the afternoon, before they had a chance to post bail, Judge Benjamin Lerner stayed the earlier order at the request of the District Attorney's Office - which wants the couple held without bail.
The couple's chances of getting bail will hinge on whether Lerner feels they violated their probation by not taking their 7-month-old son Brandon to a doctor when he fell ill and died in April.
At the time of Brandon's death, Herbert, 44, and Catherine, 43, were serving 10-year probation sentences stemming from their 2011 involuntary-manslaughter convictions in the death of son Kent, 2, who also received no medical care and died of bacterial pneumonia in 2009.
The Schaibles' probation required them to get their children regular medical checkups and care as needed.
The Rhawnhurst couple belong to a fundamentalist church that shuns medicine in favor of prayer.
District Attorney Seth Williams called Brandon's death "a tragedy" and said, "Sadly, there is only one reason for it: the criminal action of his parents."