BOSTON (AP) The state's highest court is considering an Attleboro religious sect couple's request to get out of jail.
Rebecca and David Corneau have been behind bars since February for refusing to answer a judge's questions about a baby that may or may not have been born to the couple last fall.
State welfare officials think the Corneaus may be hiding the baby, and that it could be in danger because their religious beliefs reject modern medicine.
At a hearing Thursday before the Supreme Judicial Court, the couple's lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., argued that there is no baby and that investigators have no proof that a baby ever existed. He said Rebecca Corneau had a miscarriage in November.
''No one has ever seen a child,'' he said.
Carney said the fact that investigators reported seeing a child's seat known as a ''jolly jumper'' during surveillance of the couple's home did not prove there was a child.
''You would never put a 1-month-old in a jolly jumper, they would sit there like a rag doll,'' he said.
Virginia Peel, a lawyer for the Department of Social Services, said that given the couple's history with the state, they would likely try to conceal the existence of an infant.
The couple's four other children have been placed with relatives who are not sect members.
''Why wouldn't they ... move to hide that child?'' Peel said.
In February, Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Nasif found the Corneaus in contempt for failing to either produce their baby or say where the remains of the baby are buried.