But the law is not was the defendent was insane, but if the defendent knew what they were doing was wrong.
Only if they didn’t know they were doing wrong is insanity a valid defense.
Still we don’t yet know who microwaved the baby. I hope the justice system finds who the culprit was with absolute certainty.
My understanding is that there were no outward signs of abuse, but that the burned internal organs were found at autopsy. The child quite possibly didn’t die immediately, and therefore could have been breathing and appear to be asleep.
It very well might not be, in fact. Microwaves aren’t instant invisible death; if they were, military radar operators would be dropping like flies. Microwaves do damage by heating and in this respect aren’t any different from any other type of burn injury. People do survive even serious burns. The main difference is that the microwaves can penetrate some depth into the tissues before being absorbed and turned into heat so that internal damage occurs before skin surface damage. Depending upon the power level and length of exposure, it’s very possible for a child to survive for hours and even days before succumbing to death due to organ failure.
Jinx! Buy me a coke!
This is one that I’d really have preferred to discover was an anti-drug-propaganda urban legend.
I am slightly envious, though—my microwave isn’t nearly that roomy.
In my book, you have to go a LONG way to beat Melissa Drexler for that title. I’m not sure China Arnold has her beat, but she sure gave it a try.
I don’t know. This story is comprehensible to me. Not justifiable but comprehensible. I can at least get my head around the idea of abandoning a newborn in an act of desperation. Actually keeping it for a month and then torturing it to death from the inside out…that’s a much darker place than I’m able to travel.
That depends on whether you feel it necessary to reply to any more of my comments with unsolicited snark. Other people commented on anti-DP positions, I provided my own perspective to provide context to my point–ie, the woman hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. I note no one else felt it necessary to raise the issue…
In Maine several years ago, a person cooked a small child in an oven. S/he thought the child was Lucifer.
I can’t find a link to it, but I did find another internet user remembering it in a thread about this same topic.
I tend to measure evil against the standard set by Susan Smith. These are the kinds of stories that make me think there is no god.
Yep, that’s all I meant. Could be a psycho, too, certainly.
I’m sorry, Diogenes - but I don’t think the case you cite is even the most evil thing done to a child in Ohio in the last few months.
There are parents who starve their children to death, sometimes over a period of months or years. They get my vote for most evil.
When such a deranged thing happens within a year after the birth of a child, I first think of post partum psychosis rather than “evil.” And I think there are a lot of women who become psychotic (not just depressed) that we don’t even hear about.
It happened to someone who married into our family – a lovely and intelligent woman with a warm personality. Her children were temporarily sent to live with grandparents.
Many people just don’t realize how quickly hormones and brain chemistry can alter the very core of who you are. Imagine an experiment with drugs that you don’t come down from for months – only it is very paranoid.
That’s one good reason to presume this woman innocent until proven guilty.
Not even if you’ve already got a tendancy towards psychoticness? I think even WEED might even increase psychotic tendancies, in SOME people. (not anti weed, but there has been some corralation with weed usage and clinically psychotic DSM behavoirs.
What about meth? I seem to recall reading in my lurking days, about a VERY violent rape by a man on meth(greatest pain you can every imagine thread)…and meth usage does have WICKED high rates of child abuse.
Talking about psychosis, my mother had a depression induced psychotic outbreak some months ago; I had to physically restrain her while she raved about killing me because “it would be fun” and tried to poke my eyes out.
When people go crackers morality and humanity go out of the window.
Meth and crack are very different drugs. However, I agree with Zoe that my first thought was that this woman was PPS. My second thought was that the babysitter could very well have done it. Most drug addicts don’t kill their children; they may neglect them, but a horrendous murder such as this has all the earmarks of a person who stepped off the edge of her mind.
Now…I’m not sure what evidence took them off the babysitter’s trail, but it sounds like there’s something drawing their focus to the mother. There may be evidence that she was high, may have sought treatment for PPS or family members may have reported PPS-like behaviors. We probably won’t hear the details until the trial. I’ll hold judgement on her until then.
Sick and sad beyond comprehension. Still doesn’t change my death penalty views, though (which are anti-).
I agree. There is a theory that women like Drexler don’t even think of the baby/fetus as a child, much less their child. There is a complete absence of bonding. The woman does not do any of the mental preparation or nesting that a willing expectant mother would, she just copes from moment to moment and when she delivers, it’s not the beginning of a new life, it’s a messy problem she has to clean up.
China took a whole month to (allegedly) murder her child. I agree that the idea was to kill the baby without leaving any marks.
I have to agree. I’ve known two women in my life who have been victims of this terrible mental illness. Both of them did things that they never would have dreamed of doing if they were in their right minds.
Sure, there’s a possibiity that this woman is just evil, but I think that it’s probably more likely she had a mental breakdown. She needs psychiatric help, not condemnation.