Do you think she should get off on an insanity plea for killing her 5 children?
Or should she get life or the death penalty.
I’m suprised her husband’s standing by her.
Hmm… let’s see. She killed her 5 children? The death penalty sounds appropriate. Insane or not, she killed 5 innocent people.
No way. She’s freeking nuts. Her husband wouldn’t stand by her if he didn’t believe she was innocent of willful murder.
And to Parental Advisory, I would ask, if she got in an accident in the car and all five children died, would you expect the same punishment? After all, she killed five innocent people.
And by “no freeking way” I mean that she should not be put to death, and should be allowed out of jail and eventually out of the hospital if she gets well. This woman did not want her children to die.
Well, I have to admit that drowning them is the most unsual way to show it.
Sigh…that whole “mental illness” thing just doesn’t seem to count for anything with all you hard-liners, huh?
Her mental illness was, IIRC, tied to post partum depression. I don’t know what that condition is like, but wether it is the cause or not, she killed her 5 children. At the very least that should involve being locked up and having the key tossed.
At least life without parole, but I wouldn’t have a problem with the DP being imposed here, either.
And tie her tubes so that idiot husband can’t get her knocked up again.
Her husband divorced her.
Last I heard, he was lookin for a new lady…
Oh, I’m sure he is, so he can create another pack of kids to leave her at home with all day with no help.
Damn straight.
It’s not a bullshit diagnosis. Some women become severely, severely fucked up by it. They do things they would never contemplate, never dream in a million years of doing, if they were rational. They become, quite simply, insane.
I’ve experienced it in my family with tragic results. I’ve seen how incredibly powerful it can be.
I pity Andrea Yates deeply. No prison can compare to the hell in her own mind.
The husband and wife were both in that together. He knew she had problems as they kept procreating.
Besides, think of what it might take to drown your own kids one after another. If there were ever such a thing as insanity…
If I was her though, I’d wish to die.
Her husband and other family members knew she was a threat to the children, and made some attempt to prevent her being alone with them. They didn’t try anything else that was effective, such as medical help.
And then they (the husband I think) did leave her with them, long enough for her to get them all.
Repeat: they knew she was insane and in that particular way.
Precisely. It’s called post-partum psychosis; it’s on a whole other level to post-partum depression. It’s a psychosis. So she was insane when she committed the murders. So she did not know what she was doing. You really want to give someone the death penalty for committing acts when they truly had no control over their actions?
I know two cases of post-partum psychosis, both women from my hometown. One case ended tragically when one of the women committed suicide after touching the botton of insanity. The other, luckily, and with appropriate treatment (that included medication) was able to rebuild her life. Even in my small, one-horse town, with only a visiting psychiatrist, post-partum psychosis is well accepted. In both cases the first thing the doctor ordered was “get the child away from them, now!”.
Apparently, (and that’s what I heard), they see the world so fundamentally fucked up that they want to spare their beloved children of the suffering. That’s why they are so dangerous.
I never claimed that it was bullshit. I just don’t think that this lady should escape being institutionalized for the rest of her life because of it.
And what if she made an error in judgement in traffic and killed them all that way? Life in prison? The death penalty? The fact that she took their lives should have no bearing on how society deals with her now. She was psychotic and should not be punished for the rest of her life for that. She should be treated as any other sick person is treated.
I’m opposed to the death penalty in general and also specifically in this case. Life imprisonment wouldn’t bother me too much, considering the magnitude of her crime. I know she wasn’t in her right mind while doing it, but it was still so incredibly heinous that it doesn’t seem too much to keep her institutionalized forever. If she is ever released, I hope that one of the conditions is that, as someone mentioned earlier, she has her tubes tied. I’m generally not in favor of forced sterilization, but this is definitely a woman who needs to never have children again.