mourningstar said:
on a more serious note, it can happen that someone wasn't in complete possession of their faculties when commiting the crime, and is back to being perfectly sane afterwards. only, i do not think this is that case in point.
the problem in this case, and similar cases, is how much emphasis the prosecutors and the jury will put on a possible factual truth that is impossible to prove but almost as difficult to disprove. obviously, i'm not referring to whether this woman was indeed told by god to murder her children or not - as this is completely irrelevant in court - but to whether she did hallucinate some such thing or not.
speaking in a rather abstract and formal way, if the hallucinations have indeed taken place, she can't be found guilty of first degree murder because she was not of a sound mind while committing the crime: it's next to automatic to assume seeing/hearing things that are not there takes criminal responsibility from your actions away from you. if, on the other hand, the hallucinations idea is the posthumous fabrication of her rational mind, then there is no case for insanity.
of course there is no way in hell a third party can ever be certain about a particular experience that is not tangible from the outside, and this is what makes the whole scenario so prone to abuse on the part of prosecutors and lawyers alike. yet i contend that in theory the principle is quite sound, and it's only the application to any specific situation that is lacking.
as for the death penalty, i'm not strongly against it, but if i were to pick a case for, it certainly wouldn't be this one: from sentencing to death this woman, there would come absolutely no social benefit, since: (a) she's certainly not likely to kill again, having exhausted the number of minors who will ever be in her grasp and being extremely unlikely to take it out on anyone who can defend himself; (b) killing her to set an example for and deter thousands of other moms who might at some point decide to kill their children is ridiculous, because it's obvious that if you're such a basketcase you're not going to worry about the lethal injection or the electric chair waiting for you. this just leaves us with revenge, but since - unfortunately - the closest relative for the victims was the culprit herself, i pretty much doubt that the family of the kids in the person of their mother would feel relieved by seeing
herself put to death. so why killing the woman? just toss her into prison or a lunatic asylum and forget about her: there's nothing more for society to protect here, society already lost its battle when she killed her kids.
that made my day...
