Dale and Leilani Neumann: reckless-homicide convictions after prayer replaced medical care
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Material that narrows or disputes the record
Appellate history
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed both convictions on July 3, 2013, rejecting the parents' fair-notice, jury-instruction, ineffective-assistance and jury-bias challenges.
Record class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
parents responsible for a child's medical care, parents teaching that illness has spiritual root causes
Organization
No organization assigned
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The supreme court record states that the parents chose prayer instead of medicine because they believed illness had spiritual root causes. During the child's rapid decline, medical support was described as taking glory from God, the illness as a spiritual attack and test of faith, and divine healing as the expected outcome. The court recorded medical evidence that treated diabetic ketoacidosis had a 99.8 percent survival rate and that survival remained highly likely well into the day of death.
- Spiritual healing or treatment
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2009-05-22 · separate jury trials and sentences
Marathon County Circuit Court, Wisconsin. Separate juries convicted each parent of second-degree reckless homicide. The mother's verdict was returned May 22, 2009; the father's separate trial followed that year. Each received 180 days in jail and ten years of probation, with the jail time structured as 30 days annually for six years on alternating months.
2013-07-03 · consolidated final state appeal, Nos. 2011AP1044-CR and 2011AP1105-CR
Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The court affirmed both convictions and orders denying postconviction relief. It held that Wisconsin's prayer-treatment protection for child-abuse charges did not negate the duty to provide medical care or immunize second-degree reckless homicide when a child died.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- prayer used in place of medical treatment
- illness framed as spiritual attack
- medical intervention framed as taking glory from God
- life-threatening illness framed as a test of faith
- belief that divine healing or resurrection would occur
Cited record
Sources
- official state supreme court opinion final appellate judgment and nexus Supreme Court of Wisconsin, State v. Neumann, 2013 WI 58, 348 Wis. 2d 455, 832 N.W.2d 560 (July 3, 2013).
The official opinion records the two convictions, sentences, final affirmance, medical evidence, prayer-treatment beliefs and the court's construction of Wisconsin's religious-treatment provision.
- state supreme court opinion reproduction accessible opinion copy Supreme Court of Wisconsin, State v. Neumann, 2013 WI 58 (official opinion reproduced by Justia).
The accessible opinion reproduction preserves the full factual record, procedural posture, separate verdicts, sentences, statutory analysis and final judgment.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=99671 Corpus classification: official-state-supreme-court-opinion; evidentiary role: final-appellate-judgment-and-nexus. SHA-256 e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://law.justia.com/cases/wisconsin/supreme-court/2013/2011ap001044-cr.html Corpus classification: state-supreme-court-opinion-reproduction; evidentiary role: accessible-opinion-copy.
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts
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