Kill your kids and get off by claiming 'god told me to'

[Brent]

So....all I have to do is claim "god told me to do it" and I get a free ride. Amazing.

Do you think the dad could have killed his kids, made this claim, and gotten off? Me neither.

Child-killing mom acquitted of charges
   
TYLER, Texas (AP) - A Texas woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons was acquitted Saturday of all charges after a jury determined she was legally insane during the killings.

A jury found Deanna Laney did not know right from wrong May 9 when she killed her two older sons, ages six and eight, in the front yard and left the youngest, now two, maimed in his crib. Laney, 39, was found not guilty by reason of insanity of charges of capital murder and serious injury to a child.

Laney broke into tears as the verdict was read. Her husband, Keith Laney, sat emotionless. A few jurors cried and struggled to maintain their composure.

State law allows Laney to be committed to a maximum-security state hospital. Medical evaluations will dictate when she will be released.

In closing arguments earlier Saturday, prosecutors portrayed the killings last Mother's Day weekend as deceptively planned and coldly executed.

"It was graphic, it was horrific and it was brutal," prosecutor Matt Bingham told the jury.  
 

Laney had faced life in prison for the deaths of eight-year-old Joshua and six-year-old Luke, and the beating of Aaron, now two.

Bingham pounded his fist in his hand as he recounted Joshua's killing: "He got strike after strike after strike on his head to the point that his brains were coming out of his head like liquid."

Defence lawyers argued insanity was the only reason why a deeply religious mother who homeschooled her children would kill two of them and maim another without so much as a tear.

All five mental-health experts consulted in the case, including two for the prosecution and one for the judge, concluded a severe mental illness caused Laney to have psychotic delusions that rendered her incapable of knowing right from wrong during the killings - the standard in Texas for insanity.

Psychiatrists testified Laney believed she was divinely chosen by God - just as Mary was chosen to bear Christ - to kill her children as a test of faith and then serve as a witness after the world ended.

Prosecutors portrayed the killings as deceptively planned and coldly executed. They said even if Laney believed she was doing right by God, she had to have known she was doing wrong by state law. Her first call, they pointed out, was to 911 to summon authorities.
 
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/04/03/407677-ap.html

[StPaulieGirl]

I'm surprised that she was acquitted.

We were discussing this case on another message board.  Several people brought up the question of a father being acquitted under the exact same circumstances.  The answer is no.  I think it's because it is easier to believe that a woman can lose her mind, because women are seen as more mentally fragile as opposed to  men.

This is a very strange case.  Personally I can believe something talked to her, and it wasn't God.  

On a related case, accounts have come out about Andrea Yates repeated suicide attempts in prison.

[doood]

just wait...
after a couple years of therapy and drugs she'll be back out on the street. the great swami says she'll have custody of the two-year-old before he turns ten.

[StPaulieGirl]

after a couple years of therapy and drugs she'll be back out on the street. the great swami says she'll have custody of the two-year-old before he turns ten.

[p]Now there's a disgusting thought.  I think they should give her the jail cell, and get Andrea Yates into a psychiatric facility.  Andrea's repeated suicide attempts suggest that her meds are working...she knows what she did, and wants to die.  Maybe it would be a kindness to let her succeed.

[p]What exactly going on with overly religious, homeschooling women killing their kids these days?