10th Circuit vacates family convictions in 3-year-old’s desert compound death

The 10th Circuit vacated kidnapping convictions against family members who took a 3-year-old boy from his mother in Georgia and brought him to a New Mexico compound, where he died during an exorcism ritual meant to purge him of evil spirits. The court found the trial judge misinstructed the jury, since the father, as the child's natural parent, had legal authority to take him regardless of the mother's consent.

The panel also vacated convictions against the father and his brother-in-law for conspiring to kill federal officers, ruling the pro se defendants were improperly excluded from bench conferences about jury notes. The sisters and brother-in-law cannot be retried on the kidnapping charges. Group leader Jany Leveille, who told the family the boy was possessed and would be reincarnated as a messianic figure, had already pleaded guilty separately.

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