A US judge has agreed to drop murder charges against a woman accused of starving her one-year-old son to death if the little boy is resurrected, a lawyer for the accused said Tuesday.
Ria Ramkissoon, now 22, was accused with four other members of a small cult called One Mind Ministries of starving her infant son Javon Thompson to death in 2007.
According to prosecutors, the leader of the sect, a Baltimore woman who goes by the name of Queen Antoinette, had ordered Ramkissoon and other sect members to stop feeding Javon after he didn't say "amen" at breakfast.
In a hearing Monday before the Baltimore Circuit Court, Judge Timothy Doory accepted Ramkissoon's guilty plea and agreed to let her testify against Queen Antoinette and the other defendants.
But if Ramkissoon's son "is resurrected, as you still hold some hope he will be, you may withdraw the plea and the charges against you will be withdrawn," Doory said.
"It's a sad, crazy situation," Ramkissoon's lawyer Steven Silverman told AFP.
"Had we gone to trial, her only defense would have been, 'My child will be resurrected, therefore I'm not guilty.'
"You and I and everyone else knows that's not happening, but she's been brainwashed by a cult and still believes it to this day," he said.
Silverman said as far as he knew, the plea deal marked a global legal first.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_judge_will_drop_charges_in_event_03312009.html
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