JAVON THOMPSON - 1 yo (2007) - Baltimore MD

A former member of a religious cult backed out of a plea deal Friday
and will face trial on charges that he and others starved a toddler to
death because the boy refused to say "Amen" after meals.

Marcus
A. Cobbs, 22, had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of
accessory after the fact. But his attorney abruptly withdrew the plea
after a dispute with prosecutors over the conditions of his release.

Cobbs
will now face trial in January along with three other members of the
now-defunct cult known as 1 Mind Ministries. All four face charges of
murder and child abuse in the January 2007 death of 1-year-old Javon
Thompson and could face life in prison if convicted.

Had Cobbs
pleaded guilty, he would not have admitted any role in starving the
child. But he did help the cult members cover up Javon's death,
according to a statement of facts read in court to support his guilty
plea.

He burned a mattress where the boy's body had lain for
several days while the cult members prayed for his resurrection,
according to the statement. He also measured Javon's body, washed it,
wrapped it in a blanket and placed it inside a suitcase that he bought,
the statement said.

The cult members drove to Philadelphia with
the suitcase containing Javon's body, where they hid it in a shed
behind a home, according to the statement and other court documents.
The suitcase remained there for more than a year before police found it.

Javon's
mother, Ria Ramkissoon, was part of the cult and pleaded guilty to
child abuse resulting in death. She is expected to testify against the
other members and remains jailed. At the time of her plea in March, she
held out hope that Javon would be resurrected, and in an extraordinary
arrangement, prosecutors agreed to withdraw her plea if that occurs.

Maureen
Rowland, Cobbs' public defender, told the Associated Press she thought
her client would receive a five-year suspended sentence and be released
from jail immediately after pleading guilty.

"He was only taking
it because he wanted to get out of jail," Rowland said. "If he was
sitting in jail, it wouldn't be a good deal."

But prosecutors
said they never agreed to his immediate release. Their tentative plan
was for Cobbs to live with a relative out of state until after the
trial of the other three cult members, said Joseph Sviatko, a spokesman
for the state's attorney's office.

Attorneys did not bring up
their disagreement about the conditions of Cobbs' release until after
Baltimore Circuit Judge John Philip Miller accepted the guilty plea.

Clearly
exasperated, Miller called the attorneys to the bench for a heated
conference, after which Rowland announced that she was withdrawing the
plea. Miller agreed to throw it out.

"You didn't have an agreement, it appears," the judge said.