Queen Antoinette - aka Toni Sloan or Toni Ellsberry - sat at a defense table Tuesday and grimaced every time she heard a statement she didn't like, particularly those containing the words "cult" or "commune."

Her actions irked Assistant Public Defender Maureen Rowland, representing one of Antoinette's co-defendants in a bizarre homicide case that involves the alleged starvation death of a toddler.

Antoinette's side comments during the motions hearing are "just one small thing that is going to come up over and over and over again," Rowland argued before Baltimore Circuit Judge Timothy Doory as she sought a separate trial for her client.

Even though Doory noted a "great potential for a train wreck" during proceedings at which Antoinette intends to represent herself, he denied the lawyer's request.

Prosecutors claim cult members - including Antoinette and her daughter, Trevia Williams, who is also representing herself - starved the 16-month-old boy at Antoinette's order because he refused to say "amen" after meals.

Police say the cult members carried the boy's body to Pennsylvania in a suitcase in the hope that he could be resurrected later.

Jury selection is to begin today and testimony on Monday.

The boy's mother, Ria Ramkissoon, has pleaded guilty to child abuse resulting in death, though prosecutors have agreed to drop the charges against her, should her son, dead three years, somehow be revived. Ramkissoon is expected to testify against the other defendants next week.

Prosecutors said Tuesday they plan to drop charges against a fifth defendant, Steven Bynum, who has agreed to testify for the prosecution.

That leaves Antoinette, Williams, Rowland and her client, Marcus Cobbs, at the defense table.

While Rowland said it was "ridiculous" for her to go to trial under those circumstances, the judge said Antoinette and Williams have performed well in past hearings.

The two women have refused multiple opportunities to hire lawyers, and the trial has been postponed six times. Antoinette said she lost her home and a personal relationship because of the delays, and all the defendants have been segregated for their safety in jail.

"We should not be going on two years to be heard," Antoinette told the judge. "It's unjust."

As the alleged cult leader, she is facing a first-degree murder charge, while Cobbs and Williams are charged with second-degree murder. Prosecutors recently charged Cobbs as an accessory after the fact. All three face charges of child abuse resulting in death.

The case can be traced to mid-2006, when Ramkissoon's mother reported her daughter and grandchild missing to police. She later found they were living with a small religious group in East Baltimore, known as 1 Mind Ministries.

Court records claim that ministry members referred to one another with royal titles, wore all white and shunned professional medical care, leading some to conclude they were more cult than church.

"I fear for [my grandson's] and my daughter's safety," Ramkissoon's mother wrote in a November 2006 note to the court. "You see they are in a cult."

The mother and child disappeared soon after that. Javon's remains would not be found for nearly two years, after a New York City social worker called Baltimore police with a tip.

Charging documents allege that Javon was "deprived of food and water because he was noncompliant with existing rules of the cult" that were meant to bring the "demon" child under ministry rule. The boy died in his mother's arms in December 2006, according to police, at an apartment near Druid Hill Park.

His body was packed into a green suitcase and moved along with the rest of the ministry to Philadelphia, where the body would stay. His remains were found stashed in a shed in April 2008. A photo of his small, mummified body may be shown during the trial, Doory ruled Tuesday.

During the hearing, Rowland suggested that the case would question the definition of "death."