I heard some interviews with Andrea Yates jurors this morning on the TV. The comment of one of them was, essentially, that she must have known that what she did was wrong because she immediately called the police and her husband. And since the legal insanity test is whether or not you know what you are doing is wrong, she wasn’t legally insane.
However, had she not called the police and her husband the argument could have been that she was trying to hide what she had done and therefore must have known it was wrong.
I’m not defending her, just pointing out that this was an argument that the defendant couldn’t win.
Well, just to play devil’s advocate, she could have dressed all the kids up in Peter Pan costumes, propped them up in the yard, and flitted around naked before them crying, “I am Tinkerbell!”
OK, that was uncalled for.
But my point is that you’re right; ANY behavior on her part that could have been considered somewhat RATIONAL (whether it be calling the police, or dumping bodies in the river) exempts her from legal insanity. So the key for her would have been to do something completely illogical, in a “normal” person’s eyes… if she’d been rational enough to think of it. :rolleyes:
I personally think we’re dealing with conflicting definitions of right and wrong. I mean, knowing something is LEGALLY wrong doesn’t mean that one understands the MORAL implications. Oh, wait, I forgot… LEGAL and MORAL are the same thing! :rolleyes:
Very sad situation. It does look lose-lose. But I wonder if the person could have been “insane” temporarily, then lucid afterwards enough to call the police, etc.
Yes it was lose-lose-lose-lose-lose for her kids, but that doesn’t automatically mean she is insane, or not insane. I think just the fact that a mother did that to her kids indicates a not-so-firm grasp of sanity.
I’ve heard lots of folks opine about this. And I don’t understand it. HOw is it that you have no problem believing that in a blink of an eye some one can become sane or insane? Yes, there’s the ‘fit of rage’ concept (walk in, see your hubby in bed w/you daughter), but generally speaking, it takes quite a while to get as mentally ill as she was, and quite some time as well to recover.
I don’t see the calling of the police as such a rational act (see the OP, where I think he does a good job defining it - if she’d attempted to hide what she’d done, that would have been used as proof that she knew it was wrong - we don’t try to hide what we’ve done if we know we were in the right)