Following the second time one of their children died due to refusing medical care, a Pennsylvania couple will spend the next three to seven years in prison, NBC Philadelphia reported.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible cited religious reasons for not bring their sick children to the doctor. However, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner told the couple that it wasn't time for 8-month-old Brandon to die.
"You've killed two of your children... not God, not your church, not religious devotion -- you," Lerner said.
After their two-year-old son, Kent, died of untreated pneumonia in 2009, the Schaibles were under a court order to seek treatment for the rest of their kids.
Each parent was sentenced to seven years in prison, followed by 30 months of probation. Herbert Schaible, 45, has been in jail while awaiting sentencing while Catherine Schaible, 44, will begin her sentence next month.
They pleaded no contest to third-degree murder in November.
The Schaibles are third-generation members of the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.
According to NBC 10, both parents expressed remorse for the deaths of their children and apologized for violating the court order. A lawyer for the mother argued on behalf of religious beliefs and a lawyer for the father claimed the death of his kids were not intentional or malicious.
"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 said in a 2013 police statement. Medicine, he claimed, "is against our religious beliefs."
After a jury convicted them following Kent's death, they were placed on 10 years probation and ordered to seek medical attention for any other children that got sick.
