Faith-healing dad loses bid to drop murder case

Faith-healing dad loses bid to drop murder case

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A judge refused to dismiss murder charges against a fundamentalist Christian in the faith-healing death of his son, noting that another child had died four years earlier.

A court order from the first case requires Herbert and Catherine Schaible to seek immediate medical help if another child is sick or injured.

According to their police statements, they instead sat and rocked their 8-month-old son Brandon before he died of pneumonia in April.

Defense lawyer Bobby Hoof asked Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner to dismiss the third-degree murder charge Wednesday on grounds there was no malice.

Lerner says that argument would be stronger, but “we’ve been here before, ... under strikingly similar circumstances.”

Catherine Schaible is due in court this afternoon for the same motion to dismiss the case.