3 Babies Killed - Only 8 years...

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Simple answer: YES.

He clearly does not have a capability of keeping reality and fears separate. Such poor judgement will likely surface elsewhere as well.

How many times do you hear of some wack job that showed these kind of violent tendancies in the past, but they were ignored because of "extinuating circumstances?"

I fully understand killing in defense, but random killing because of anxiety is not defense.

 

T2, the issue here becomes what level of defense is appropriate? Do you wait for them to break into your home and hold your daughter at knife-point to defend yourself or, given a real past circumstance (where fears and reality went hand-in-hand), do you take the line at the edge of your property and a single shouted warning (which many kids these days are likely to ignore). And what if he showed no past history of violent tendencies?

T2, you show a certain bias against "extenuating cercumstances", and I'll agree that they've been used as an excuse a great many times, but they are also a part of the legal system for a very good reason: they really happen.

Ultimately, the difference between murder, manslaughter, and self defense can often come down to the projected sequence of events (when does the threat become serious). The law's projection is probably informed by statistics and personal experience concerning thousands or millions of individuals over, at least, a city wide area, and likely extending to nation-wide or even international. The defendant's on the other hand, probably comes down to personal fears and personal experiences with HIS neighborhood, HIS family, and HIS house. Have fun arguing which is more applicable.

Ultimately, if you consider someone who kills in self-defense to be not guilty, then you have to allow extenuating circumstances, because self-defense is itself an extenuating circumstance. If you disallow self-defense, then you take the ridiculous position that people don't have the right to defend themselves, or the equally ridiculous position that the police are a preventative force, not a penal force, and blame them for every crime that is successfully committed, regardless of whether the perpetrators get away.

 

A kid walking across a yard is not defense (and I said defense, not just self-defense). A person breaking into your home is. Period. There is a line, it's very clear in the eyes of sane individuals, and people who are willing to extend that line out of anxiety should be isolated from society. The reasons for lethal force are very rare and very specific.

Perhaps you just used a poor example. Your last paragragh was simply conjecture taken to a ridiculous extreme. However, the topic is about a woman who killed her children, not when extreme violence should be okay.

 

T2, there are a lot of very sane people who would disagree with you. Most in the US put up "Private Property" or "No Tresspassing" signs. I seem to recall that the law, however, refers to a threat of immenent force (don't know if it's required to be lethal). Now, there's some discussion as to how "immenent" is immenent, and how creadible the threat has to be, but generally speaking, a young man, moving deteminantly (can easily appear threatening) across a yard toward the house (in this case intending to bypass the house to what is behind/in front of it) on a dark night just weeks after that house had experienced a violent break-in, and ignoring yells and threats from that house, is presenting a real threat to the people in that house. This is especially true if the house isn't in a crowded suburb, but rather in an isolated rural area where police may be quite some time away (actually, in many suburbs, response time isn't great).

... Yeah, we kind of got off topic there, huh?

Back on topic:
TGS, I'm not sure if I would say this verdict was a matter of sexism or if the verdict on a man would be the matter of sexism. It is true that the two are held to different standards, but the question is: which is the right one?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this a thread about a woman killing her children? I could have sworn it was. Hmmm....must be confused as it's clearly about legal definitions of sanity....

 

Silvery, are you new to the alleys or something? These things are like a study in stream-of-consciousness writing.

 

You and I have argued enough for you to know I'm not! I just get bugged when people go off on a tangent

 

A tangent is a straight line that touches a curve without crossing it.

So much for my tangent. Now Silvery hates me.

Now for the topic at hand, I quite simply don't buy the whole temporary insanity thing. Lots of women suffer from post partum depression. Lots of people suffer from other forms of depression. But they don't go out and kill other people -- or babies -- because of it. I myself suffered from extreme depression a few years ago -- I wanted to do all sorts of things that were stunningly illegal (and immoral, by most moral systems -- and sinful, by most religious systems, but let's focus on the illegal part) I didn't, because I knew that despite my condition, it was not a licence to commit a crime.

I don't have a hate on for the mentally ill, I just think that illness or not, people are responsible for their actions. IMHO, using post partum as an excuse for murder is reprehensible and an insult to all of the decent women who suffer horribly from the condition.

 

Actually, more than a few women who suffer from postpartum depression (and aren't treated for it) do kill, abandon, or maim their children. Generally, they don't stick them in freezers, though.

I'm personally wondering if she may have suffered from postpartum psychosis, which is much graver and more lethal, to both mother and child, though thankfully much rarer as well. Of course, it could also have been any of dozens of other disorders that don't focus around pregnancy or birth, but the issues raised with a new child would exacerbate. Combine most of them with a fragine and dependant new baby and you can get a great many tragedies.

LKD, for many psychological conditions I would completely agree with you. Narcisistic personality disorder isn't an excuse for anything. Any disorder that impacts your ability to think rationally or your perception of the world, however, is another issue. This generally means a psychosis or schizophrenia of some kind. In these cases, I fully believe the individuals are not responsable for their actions (unless previously diagnosed and gone off meds) any more than a man who suffers a stroke while driving a car is responsable for the damage he causes while unconscious.

Generally speaking, people don't question either their base perceptions or their thought processes, not unless an obvious contradiction is noticed (which is highly unlikely in the case of delussions). Acting on those basic assumptions is generally considered to be sane, while challenging them without cause is generally considered troubling at best. It is only when those basic assumptions don't match up with reality that we run into problems with them. When the cash we just handed the clerk is actually a switchblade, and the clerk is actually a traffic cop, we get problems. Since most mental disorders don't warn their sufferers prior to onset, though, the sufferers have no idea there's a problem, usually until it's too late.

As for postpartum depression, I'm a little on the fence there, and I think it heavily depends on the individual case. I've suffered from depression, too, and it can make you do some strange things. Even though, intellectually, you still know right from wrong, emotionally, you are in a terrible place, and that can seriously impact your judgement. From what I've heard, postpartum depression is one of the worst forms of depression.

 

I don't hate you LKD!!

As somebody who has had post-natel depression I know how easy it could be for somebody to hurt their child. A few times I wanted to smack or shake Ashley for no reason. I even told Rob that once he was home from work he had to deal with everything because the baby had nothing to do with me.

The difference between what I went through and the French woman is that I never acted on those feelings of violence. She has clearly got more wrong with her than post-natel depression and I dount it's psychosis. She's crazier than the average bear

**No coffee and little sleep makes for non-sensical posts and bad spelling, please direct your complaints to somebody who isn't me**

 

Actually, Silvery, the distance and disconnection that she describes could fit with some form of psychosis, and postpartum (aka post-natal) psychosis is definitely crazier than your average bear!

 

NOG,

First let me say that I find your views on mental disorders and criminal insanity somewhat surprising. I would have thought you'd follow a hard line on this issue.

My personal feeling is if this woman is crazy, put her in an insane asylum, get her mental help, whatever, but in no way should she receive a lighter sentence because she's crazy. If a crime and the punishment associated with it cease to be just because the person didn't realize a crime was a crime at the time they were committing the crime, then the legal system as we know it is destroyed. I would go even one step further and say that if a person is so crazy that they didn't realize what they were doing was criminal, that there is even MORE reason to keep them locked up for a really long time.

What I would advocate for is that if she is crazy, she should not be sent to just any ordinanry prison. If she is mentally ill she should receive treatment. That's the only mitigating factor I would allow for someone who is inasne - you get to serve your incarceration at a mental facility.

 

Aldeth, the issue is that many mental disorders are potentially fixable, or at least managable. You're basically talking about jailing someone for the rest of their lives because their body did something freaky and something bad happened. We don't do that to epileptics, we don't do that to the elderly, we don't do that to people who suffer from other physical disorders, so why should we do it for a physical (or more often chemical) disorder in the brain?

And as for my position on psychological illness, why do you think I'd be a hardliner? I'm always one for understanding the situation and judging people on intent and will. On this issue, their intent and will are essentially taken from them.

On this issue, I think you're oversimplifying things a bit. It's not like we're talking about people who just claim to not know the law. We're talking about people who are incapable of making a rational decision because of a medical defect.

 

Because I think that epileptics who commit heinous crimes should also be incarcerated, as should the elderly who commit crimes, as should people with physical disorders who commit crimes, as should people with mental disorders who commit crimes. It's not like I'm singling out the people who have mental disorders specifically. Likewise, epileptics, elderly, and people who suffer from mental or physical disorders who do not commit crimes should not be imprisoned.

I'm not sure why I thought that. My perception of you in this instance was wrong - I'm not sure why though.

I agree, and because they are incapable of making rational decisions that means there's more reason to separate them from society - not less. The inability to make rational decisions makes them that much more dangerous.