Faith-Healing Couple Charged in Baby's Death

This time, a Pennsylvania couple that embraces faith healing over medicine is facing murder charges and jail time after one of their children died. Herbert and Catherine Schaible are being held without bail on third-degree murder charges filed this week in the death of their 8-month-old son to pneumonia, reports AP. When a 2-year-old son died in 2009 under similar circumstances, the couple was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but served only probation after promising to give their kids standard medical care.

"We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power," Herbert Schaible told detectives in April, explaining that medicine "is against our religious beliefs." The fundamentalist Christians belong to the small First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia. They each face seven to 14 years in prison if convicted, and their other seven children have been placed in foster care. (More Herbert Schaible stories.)