A woman who claimed she had been commanded by God to kill her 3 children was acquitted... WTF???
CLICK HERE

"Laney admitted bashing her three children in the heads with rocks. She said God told her to do so."
CLICK:Killer Mom explains why and how she murdered her children

Well, it seems it pays off to argue that you´re a "God fearing" fanatic, if you want to get away with murder.In a few years time, she will leave the mental hospital, and live happilly as if nothing had happened. Makes you increase your trust in the system, doesn´t it?
:confused:

Anyone who kills his/her children in cold blood deserves nothing less than life inprisionment in a 8 by 5 feet cell. I´m totally against the death penalty, but if ever there was someone who deserved it, it´s this woman.
:censor:

The children she killed, by bashing their heads in with a rock.


Crucify the bitch!!!
:crucify:

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Hmmm, it seems she really was insane, which begs the question, should mentally incapacitated people receive the same punishment as those who commit murders clear headed?

Had she been a Black Women, it would have been off with her head, yeah scream at me for bringing race into the issue, but its the damned truth.

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Truth? Naaah, just plain and simple presumption.
Lets not forget, she can be interned at a psychiatric institution for up to 40 years, and if she wasnt mad, well, i'd rather spend 40 years in the pen than in the loony asylum

Yeah, but in the pen she would have to sit through the whole time sentence, while in the loony bin she can get out as soon as a panel of doctors find she is "cured". If she wasn´t insane at all going in, she has a very good chance of coming out after a couple of years or so. Wich begs the question:
Should she ever be allowed outside, after killing 2 and crippling 1 children?
Can such a person be cured?
How well can she be "cured" of listening to the voice of "God"? You think a heavy dose of Vallium and Prozac will cure her? I think not.

@Barça:
Unfortunally our current understanding of the human mind doesn´t allow for a 100% accurate diagnosis of anyone´s mental desieses. It happens often a perfectlly sane person acting loony to escape deathrow. And we can´t do a damn thing about it.
But this also brings up several other questions:
Does a person who kills his/her own children can ever be considered mentally sane?
Does a man who kills several persons? If so, shouldn´t we abolish deathrow alltogether, and send all these serial killers to mental institutions for treatment? Where do we draw the line? Wich killers do we execute or jail for life, and wich killers do we treat? How do we choose? Do we choose like Hypedave mentioned, by race?
And most of all, who will trust such a person, even after she is found cured? Who takes responsability if she isn´t cured afterall, and kills again? Can she have kids again?
If she is "insane", why haven´t people like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, or the infamous "sniper" been sent to some mental institution? Weren´t they just as sick as this woman?
We cannot have two measures of justice, and dispense it as we see fit. Justice is blind, to race, to social status, to religion. Or so it should be...
But it never is. Not really.

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Emperor Augustus of Rome.

Man, that's not right, and the fact she can get out in, what, 6 months makes me furious. We have no real way of knowing that she's telling the truth either.

But, would any sane person attempt to kill three of their own children? I think it's best that she goes to an asylum, it may be for her own good.

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I think the jury made a good call on this one. This woman didn't act out of anger or rage, greed or jealousy, or for any personal gain - none of the "normal" motives for murder. She heard voices in her head, and from an "authority" she simply wasn't able to resist. She's obviously crazy. As the article said; she'll be going to a maximum security mental hospital - and that is a high security prison, make no mistake about that. In fact, a place like that is probably a darned sight worse than your average high security prison, I'd bet. And I don't think that there is any guarantee at all that she'll be allowed to go free even after 40 years if she's still crazy. If she's still crazy and still poses any sort of threat to herself or to society they can legally keep her in a mental hospital forever, if they wish. That's the law. Psychiatrists can do what judges can not; they can lock you away forever without a trial or a jury of any sort, their say-so alone is sufficient. If she's not still crazy in 40 years then why not let her free again? The purpose of most prisons is rehabilitation as much as punishment, I think, after all. If somebody truly has been rehabilitated (or has been returned to sanity) then where do you stand, morally, if you desire to just continue to punish them forever anyway? That's not right, either. Personally, I think that anybody that just gets off on punishing others relentlessly or in seeing them punished is a little distrubed too, if you ask me.

I agree totally. There is nothing to gain from keeping a rehabilitated man in jail. But how can we tell the diference? I think the current legal system is very conservative in its apraisal of a man´s rehabilitation. The legal system prefers to hold and maintain a possibly rehabilitated man in custody, than to release a likely and still criminal element into society. :rolleyes:
But that´s not the question here.
I have a hard time believing even the craziest of persons would actually be listening to "voices". I think these "voices" are actually part of a lawyer´s strategy, and part of some urban folclore. It´s common knowledge that lawyers will use any and whatever means necessary to get their client off, including staging a theater for the juri to see. What better to convince a juri than claiming that "i hear voices"?
Honestly, i have yet to come across a genuine case of "voices". It´s the oldest trick in the book. I imagine that if the "sniper" had pleaded not guilty and claimed hearing voices of Allah, he wouldn´t be sitting in deathrow (if he isn´t dead yet). And you know what separates one from the other? You know what stands between a lifetime in jail or deathrow, and a life in a mental hospital with much better conditions and a pretty good chance of getting out? It´s simple: all it takes is for you to be a good actor. Wich means, those who suck at acting will suffer in the electric chair, lethal injection or the gas chamber. And those with a "shakespearian" vein in them will get a fair chance of getting away with murder...
Just as she can very well spend her entire life in the mental hospital, she can also get out in a few years. It all depends on wether she really is crazy, and what the hospital board thinks.

So she says. But how can you tell? You will have to rely on her word, the word of a woman on trial for murder, fighting for her life! She will say anything, if she thinks it will help her cause. And how do we know she didn´t kill them out of anger? Because she told us so?

As opposed as i am to the death penalty, i cannot help wondering what else can be done in such cases. I believe that a man who kills another in self defense, or in particular circumstances should be given a second chance in life, and the oportunity of rehabilitating himself. But what can society do with a serial killer? Is there any chance of rehabilitation at all? Are we wasting our efforts on such people? Can we call, having a person commited for life in a mental institution and chemically lobotomized, can we call that "rehabilitation"? I think the Law books are in need of a fundamental change:
If found guilty, the defendant should have the choice to end his own life, instead of spending the rest of it locked up in jail or in a mental hospital. It would be economically advisable, and it would allow the convicts a final choice.
The chances of having a hard criminal rehabilitated after decades in jail are nill. Our current legal system is only capable of punishment, not rehabilitation. The individual will come out of jail as law abbiding as he went in. There is no attempt made on reeducating him, or rehabilitating him to live in society. All they can expect from jailtime is raw punishment, and nothing else...

__________________
"Quincitilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
Emperor Augustus of Rome.

By the way, it seems this "kill in the name of God" is more common than we think:
Read here:

This killer mom was convicted to 2 years in prison, after killing her 2 children and atempting suicide to rejoin her husband in heaven...
Read here:

There seems to be a lot of killer moms out there. And they all do it in the name of...
It must be a new trend.
But the issue here is that they had entirely diferent sentences:
One was sentenced to regular jail, while the other was sentenced to mental institution, even though both cases shared enormous similarities.
Bugger me if i know why...


PS:It seems one of these killer moms has been adopted as the new banner of a feminist organization, wich raised funds for her defense.
Read it here:

Read it HERE also, as the killer mom became the new poster child for feminist groups:

"Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children last June, is the newest feminist icon. The National Organization for Women is rallying around her. Diana Lynn-Barnes of the Center for Postpartum Health sounded the battle cry: "Women are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore. There's a vast amount of compassion for Andrea Yates because . . . they can see how one could go down this road. She's a victim of a culture that says women come last." Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen invoked the "insidious cult of motherhood" to explain Yates' actions. "

Uhh???

__________________
"Quincitilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
Emperor Augustus of Rome.

i agree that it's difficult to find out, if a person is really insane or an insanely good
actor. however experts are doing the diagnosis and they'll probably find out about a
couple of people faking their state of sanity. for those who "pass the test" i don't
think that they'll come out on minimum term. there have been many experiments i once
read about, where sane psychiatrists made the test and went to a mental institution
faking some sort of disease. they couldn't get out again on their own, because then
they were diagnosed being in denial and other things. this is a case of self fulfilling
prophecy. if you are once diagnosed being insane, you'll have a very difficult time
convincing the others that you're not or no longer.

where i really don't agree with you, swamp_thing is that no attempts are made to
rehabilitate or reeducate prisoners. i once visited a prison and although there was
certainly some promotion aspect to it, they seemed to try pretty hard to do those
things. many attempts may not be successful, because of how people view ex-cons
and won't allow them to reintegrate fully to society, but nevertheless attempts are
made and are successful in some cases.

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