Housewife Who Stoned Sons Found Not Guilty

http://www.foxnews.com/ ^ | 4/3/04 | http://www.foxnews.com/

[Lunatic Fringe]

So much for Texas justice... a father would never get away with this lame defense.

[Kirkwood]

Now I know what defense to use if I ever get in big trouble... God made me do it!

[Lunatic Fringe]

I give up, folks... I really do. Texas juries have twice ruled that women can kill their children and get off with this lame insanity defense. If a father claimed God told him to kill his kids, and he crushed their skulls with large rocks, people would be screaming to bring back the electric chair to charbroil his ass.

The prevailing attitude that a mother just wouldn't do something like this unless she were crazy is the sad reality of 21st century America. And what disgusts more than the verdict is that the laws dictate she be committed until she is "well." Now, she won't be out in 6 months but probably within 6 years, after serving that time in a clean hospital, doped up on thorazine half the time, the other half being a paid consultant for the made-for-Lifetime-TV-movie.

[spunkets]

She's nuts. She is still in jail and will be until her commitment hearing. She will be placed in a nuthouse for a very long time. Same for John Hinkley and the artist that tried to bomb a smiley face on the US. That guy never had a trial, because he is so wacked out, no one claimed he was fit yet to stand trial. He just lives in the nuthouse.

Some people do crazy things for selfish reasons. The insane do insane criminal acts for insane reasons.

[deport]

Texas juries have twice ruled that women can kill their children and get off with this lame insanity defense.

---

I'm drawing a blank... who was the other one? I'm sure there may have been more.

[TheWriterInTexas]

Nope. Sorry. Wrong answer.

As a mother of two who dealt with severe post-partum after the birth of my second child (it lasted over a year), I entertained many despairing thoughts - but never about harming a hair on my babies' heads.

Despite this experience, I think she and Yates deserve the chair.

[Cinnamon Girl]

I AM SO SICK OF PEOPLE GETTING AWAY WITH KILLING THEIR CHILDREN! IT'S DISGUSTING! Who ISN'T insane who beats someone's head in? Why don't we just let all mass murderers off because it totally NOT NORMAL to hands on murder innocent human beings! EVERYONE IS INNOCENT! GET THE MEMO!

[zook]

I agree!

[Destro]

So the "Bible made me do it" defense will get you off in Texas?

[spunkets]

"despairing thoughts"

Did your babies show up with spears in their cribs and did you hear voices telling you things?

[mrustow]

Absolutely not. But the verdict should be GUILTY by INSANITY.

Is that what they call "guilty by mental defect"? Do they have that in Texas? Not every state offers juries that option.

[Cvengr]

Is that a smirk or just a happy emotional facial expression? You gotta wonder if a judge can't immediately overrule his pronouncement if he witnesses behavior in the defendant which seems to overwhelmingly indicate guilt.

[cookiedough]

Genesis 15:2-4

God told Abraham that he would have a son and his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

IMHO, if Abraham believed God, then when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, he must have realized the dichotomy and that something was going to happen to reverse that. Indeed, in Genesis 17, after Abraham proves that he trusts God, God again tells Abraham that his descendants will be "as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore."

God had told Abraham that he would have a son, something Abraham didn't believe could happen. He laughed when he heard it, because his wife was so old. But he did have a son, and it was proved thereby that Abraham was indeed listening to God.

So when God spoke to him again, Abraham continued to listen and to trust God.

Deanna Laney listened to what she thought was God. Her delusion persisted and became more intricate because she did not tell anyone about it. Everything was confined to her mind, kept a secret, and was fed by her religious beliefs, IMO. At no time did God ever prove to her that it was indeed He who was speaking to her, by rendering a miracle, as He did with Abraham.

That is the difference, as I see it.

[Howlin]

We don't have that option here in NC; but that's what it should be -- or something close to that; I don't know the correct words, but however it's denoted, it should mean, you ain't going to prison, but since we know you did it, go straight to an institution.

BTW, I'll go ever further: I'm in favor of a law that says once they are "cured" they go to prison.

[Lunatic Fringe]

Andrea Yates

[Donna Lee Nardo]

I agree with you. No such thing as temporary insanity in my book: if you are insane for one "event" then you can go off at any time. I do have some small sympathy for the mother (but she is way down on the list; her children are way, way at the top), but I still want her in jail FOREVER or at least in a mental hospital FOREVER. Rehabilitation? Ha! Never happens, right?

I abhore our criminal justice system at this point.

[deport]

That photo according to the caption was during closing arguments not after the verdict was rendered......

[dougherty]

Ditto to your whole post. This wench got away with murder. I saw her on Fox news during video footage of the verdict being read. She was so relieved. If I had killed my children while insane and was now doped up enough to realize what I did, they would have me on a constant suicide watch. I wouldn't want to be free, I'd be begging for someone to kill me. How can you live knowing you murdered your own kids in such an evil manner? Maybe some crazy person in the psych ward will stone this b*%#@ in return.

[deport]

Thanks... I had forget she was spared the needle because of the insanity but got life instead.... But she was found guilty which is more than this jury did..

[dougherty]

Ted Bundy had sex with the corpses of his victims. They fried him anyway.

For his sake, it's too bad he didn't have this jury. Murder is not a sane act and murderers should be punished. Imagine if the father had been the one to do this, he would have been hung, drawn and quartered.

[deport]

So the "Bible made me do it" defense will get you off in Texas?

---

Well it helps if you are pleading insanity to have all the shrinks saying you are insane as was in this case..... All five, two for the prosecution, two for the defense and one brought in by the court all seemed to agree....

Insanity isn't a easy defense to win in Texas or so it's claimed. Only a small precentage are successful or that's what I've read.

[spunkets]

"So the "Bible made me do it" defense will get you off in Texas?"

No. If the docs diagnose that you are completely nuts though, the jury and the law may send you to the nuthouse. That's, because the law recognizes punishment is justified by choices made. It is not justified if the person is incapable of making choices, but is driven by the random wanderings of a disfunctional mind.

[deport]

And sometimes so will the

"He needed killing defense"

[Ditter]

In Texas you can't be found Guilty & Insane. If they find that you are Insane then you are Not Guilty but they lock you up for the rest of your life in a prison for the criminaly insane. Does that make it better?

[Destro]

So the crazy because the "Bible made me do it" defense will get you off in Texas.

[Ditter]

I don't consider spending the rest of your life in a prison/hospital the same as "getting off". In Texas we don't execute insane people, no matter what you have heard about us. Neither do we let them loose.

[spunkets]

No. Her religion was just a part of her former mind. It is circumstantial. It could have been some strong attraction to a pet. Son of Sam was schizophrenic and Sam was a dog. The artist that tried to bomb a smiley face on the US was neither religious, or had pets. It was his art that showed up in his psychotic visions, hence the smiley face bombings. He can't even stand trial, because the authorities think he is too wacked out. He's just confined in a Rochester, MN nuthouse.

[Almondjoy]

That's correct.

[af_vet_1981]

Concur completely with 47

[Trinity_Tx]

(Just picking your post among others - nothing personal... Good people can and will disagree about these things.)

"Texas juries have twice ruled that women can kill their children and get off with this lame insanity defense."

Re: "Got off"... Andrea Yates got life in prison, and from all accounts, ever since she was treated enough to come out of her delusional state, has repeatedly tried to kill herself.

" If a father claimed God told him to kill his kids, and he crushed their skulls with large rocks, people would be screaming to bring back the electric chair to charbroil his ass."

Even if it were true that an insane male could not get an appropriate verdict, it wouldn't make giving an inappropriate one to a female to make the injustice "even".

"The prevailing attitude that a mother just wouldn't do something like this unless she were crazy is the sad reality of 21st century America."

Then how come so many women (including Andrea Yates, who IMHO was "crazy") fail to get verdicts of legally insane? Prisons are full of women who would have if they could.

" And what disgusts more than the verdict is that the laws dictate she be committed until she is "well." Now, she won't be out in 6 months but probably within 6 years"

That may be "getting off" more lightly than the death penalty, but it is certainly not "getting off" to the extent some seem to consider impunity... (BTW, I think there should be a minimum time spent committed - like 10 years - before one could be released - and then under supervision.)

FWIW, No one is more sickened by her act than I. I have children of my own and the thought... ugh - no words.
My gut reaction is to torture her to death.

But I do believe it is possible for someone to be so delusional thatt in their minds they believe they are doing the work of God - following a righteous path higher than mere human laws. While I think it is extremely rare, I tend to believe this is one of those cases. Not only are we Texans less likely than most to accept excuses, but it seems even her prosecutors couldn't find paid witnesses to support them.

[Trinity_Tx]

Kinda novel to have us Texans accused of being soft on crime, isn't it? <G>

[Ditter]

Yes it is.

[SkyPilot]

It looks like a smirk to me.

[mrustow]

We don't have that option here in NC; but that's what it should be -- or something close to that; I don't know the correct words, but however it's denoted, it should mean, you ain't going to prison, but since we know you did it, go straight to an institution.

BTW, I'll go ever further: I'm in favor of a law that says once they are "cured" they go to prison.

That sounds about right to me. I believe that some states actually do approximate that set up, with "guilty by means of mental defect," or whatever the wording is. One way or another, you're kept under lock and key ... forever.

[Triple Word Score]

The big problem we have is focusing on the concept of punishing very dangerous people, when in fact we ought to focus on protecting society.

We don't cage rabid dogs together and let them tear at each other in their crazed misery. We don't punish crazy animals. We don't try to rehabilitate dangerous animals. We destroy them.

I will never understand why we cage people so sick and so lost that there is nothing we can do to make them safe to have around. We don't have the power to fix people like this. Medicines are so uncertain with severe psychosis, and noncompliance with treatment is the biggest problem with insanity.

There is a kinder and wiser judge who has the power to dispense perfect justice. Atheists may have something to fear from a kindly applied capital punishment...crazy people who can't tell right from wrong really don't.

We'll all face death eventually. Why not make the date certain for people who are too sick to fix?

I'm really sorry for this woman...if she was responsible for her actions in any way at all her punishment will be greater than I can imagine, and if she was not, heaven help her if she ever does recover her sanity enough to know what she did. For surely she'd lose it again right afterward.

[kristenwood75]

Not only did she know what she was doing, she planned it....otherwise why did she put the rock under the baby's crib before she went to bed and why did she try to lock her sleeping husband in the bedroom, before she carries out that plan....
If her husband had been the one to do this, he would have been found guilty and given the death penalty.

[MattAMiller]

Juries are mostly illiterate these days because that is how the attorney's want them to be.

You know if you went around asking Ivy Leauge graduates you'd probably have trouble finding many that think that these sorts of verdicts are always inappropriate.

And I'm not convinced that modern juries are any more likely that juries of the past to hand down such a verdict. There was a relatively famous case back in the 50's were a woman drowned her kids and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. So it certainly happened.

[kristenwood75]

crazy people don't do rational? Then why the 911 call, clearly rational.

[jess35]

Why is calling 911 "rational"? It seems to me that killing your kids and then calling 911 to Proclaim their death to the world is highly irrational. If she were planning on killing them, it would have made more sense to try and hide the bodies and the act itself.

[My Dog Likes Me]

Where were the husbands while this Laney & Yates serial killing was going on? Didn't they see the warning signs, like at a railroad crossing??! I would have my boys away from this woman (if I had any).

So suppose some black guy or cracker goes to prison for 90 years because of the three strikes laws (he likes to rob things; doesn't hurt anybody). He kills someone in prison who messed with him, and then gets the needle or chair or firing squad within months.

This is all too weird.

[MeekOneGOP]

Posted on FR last night also ...

Mother acquitted in sons' stoning deaths

Hard to believe. After the jury was out for four hours and still no verdict,
I was thinking they might come back with this verdict ...

[hoosierham]

I favor the "mad dog" option; i.e. I don't give a tinker's damn that some doctor says the killer is crazy. Just humanely put to death all murderers and set free all who acted in self-defense.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Good post. I'm getting rather tired listening to people saying they'd like to see Andrea Yates fry.

There is a huge difference between Andrea Yates and Susan Smith. Andrea Yates had been shopped around to several psychiatrists, by her husband. Why on earth he left her with their children, when she could barely comb her hair or dress herself, is beyond me. What a horrible case.

Susan Smith was having an affair with a man who told her he didn't want to deal with her kids, so she killed them. Then she told the cops that a black man carjacked her, and kidnapped the boys. There was even a police sketch of the alleged suspect. Can you imagine if she had gotten away with it, and an innocent man had gone down for her crime?

As for this case, I don't know. Could this woman have just "snapped" one day and started hearing God? God isn't the only one who talks to people. Satan has been known to do that too.

[Mercat]

Good post. I only had post partum depression for one day but called someone. No one has said whether she was bipolar. I'm close to someone who's thought processes are diminished. It's hard to know what he'll do since he does a lot of little things which are not rational. I'm thinking that there must have been signs of her insanity so I'm wondering where her husband and family were. I'm pro-home schooling but now with someone who is crazy. I find it hard to believe that this craziness hit all at once like a ton of bricks. Where's the rest of the story?

[FITZ]

So much for Texas justice... a father would never get away with this lame defense.

That's what I was thinking --- if it were reversed --- a father who had previously had committed adultery against his wife, waited until the wife was very sound asleep and then went through the house brutally killing the children after premeditation would be viewed differently.

[netmilsmom]

This gives homeschooling a bad name.
I just told my hubby that if I begin to act looney, please commit me. If the pressure is too much in homeschooling (and there is pressure!) Send them to school for a short amount of time.
All of you who want this woman put to death are letting her off easy. I want her to live for MANY, MANY years haunted by the sight of her sons being smashed by their loving mother. I want her to dream it, I want her to relive it. Let her suffer, she needs to.

[Dog Gone]

I think the difference between this case and the Andrea Pia Yates case, where the jury found her sane, is very small. Both killed their kids because they thought God wanted them to do so.

Both called 911 to report themselves, which does show that they KNEW what they had done was wrong.

That's all it takes to defeat the insanity defense in Texas. Knowing right from wrong, whether or not they were able to control their own actions. Most states have a much more lenient standard of what insanity is than Texas does.

The jury screwed up here.

But the difference between the two cases is that here the murder was brutal. In the Yates case, drowning is not bloody.

My criminal law professor informed me during the first two weeks of class that the best way to get away with murder is to make the bloodiest, most grotesque, murder scene possible. Odds are the jury is going to think, "only a crazy person would do something like that."

My professor was right.

[eleni121]

Let's hope (all we can do these days) that when we hear "the Koran made me do it" juries are not as "compassionate".

This is sickening...where is the justice for these murdered children and for the little one who is maimed? They bought the shrinks' (secular priests)arguments...

[elbucko]

Facts are, women do and can kill children in vicious ways.

True. The CDC stats indicate that children, 5-years old and under (infanticide) were more likely to be killed by their parents than by anyone else. Murder by the father, less than half, murder by the mother, more than half. Siblings and mom's boyfriend make up the rest.