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April 04, 2004

God Made Me Do It, Part Two

In which the author defends the acquittal of Deanna Laney, charged with murdering two of her three children:

A jury acquitted a Texas mother of killing two of her sons and seriously injuring the third after determining she was insane at the time.

Despite the horrific nature of the crime and the vulnerability of the victims, I think this was the right decision.

People will ask how a loving mother could do such a thing. I agree: how could she? The crime was a calculated event, not the act of a parent thrashing out in anger and harming the child. There was no apparent motive for the killing, no Susan Smith-esque doing-it-to-keep-my-boyfriend nonsense. There was, quite simply, no sane reason to do what she did.

I'm afraid that leaves me with only one answer: the woman was insane at the time. Might very well still be. She needs help, many years of it. No, we can't bring back her children; we'll never know what difference they might have made in the world. We can, however, choose to understand what happened, why it happened, and how we can prevent it in the future. Their deaths don't have to be for nothing, but locking Deanna Laney away for life would amount to that.

I'm not saying she should ever walk free again. I'm saying she needs help - help which might not do anything, but at the very least will further our understanding of what would drive a mother to do such a thing, especially to her own children.

I'm a father, a loving one, and my little girl means the world to me. I love her more than I love anyone. So don't bother telling me that I don't understand the love of a parent. It's my understanding of such feelings that makes me ever more certain that Ms. Laney was, for whatever reason, insane.

No sane, loving mother could, with cold calculation, summarily execute her children.

Did God tell her to do it? I think not, but then again, I'm an atheist. I do think, however, that her religion gave her mental disorders a foothold, gave a persona to the voices in her head.

I also think that every single Christian out there who has automatically condemned her as a human being and wished Hell upon her is a raging hypocrite of the highest order. I'm sure you will, in public, claim to follow the will of your God above all else - but what if he told you to kill? What if you were, deep inside, sure it was your God telling you to do this? Who are you to deny your God in favor of some state law, or in favor of what you feel is good or right?

This is, after all, your god talking to you.

I'm sorry, but belief in an undetectable deity who tells you to only do good things is different from an undetectable deity who tells you to kill exactly how? One of you has a belief that is less detrimental to those around you, but the "altruism" of a belief doesn't determine its validity.

Don't bother defending it - it's indefensible. Both of you have beliefs which are completely beyond any standard of proof or reason, and to attempt to use either in defense of your god over hers is a non-starter.

I am positively disgusted by the actions of Mrs. Laney. I think her actions were vile, a crime committed against the most vulnerable among us, against children who thought their mother was there to protect them and love them. And it is that very expectation, that knowledge that I - as a parent - hold of my own feelings for my daughter, that leads me to conclude that she had to be insane in order to undertake such a crime.

That in mind, I hope she gets the help she so clearly needs. Mindless punishment of her will do nothing to deter those in our society with no respect for life, and will do nothing to deter those who are insane. We can, however, gain some perspective from an understanding of her psyche, and of what could lead a mother to do something so horrible.

You may hate me now.

Update: People, just because she was found not guilty by reason of insanity doesn't mean she's going to be turned out on the street this afternoon:

Instead, she will immediately be taken for evaluation to a maximum security state psychiatric hospital, where she could stay as long as 40 years.

Continuing from my post above, the age of her youngest child virtually screams (to my non-med-school, fan-of-the-news mind) an undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or utterly ignored (per the Yates family) case of post-partum depression. While smashing her brains out with a rock sounds like a fine way to get revenge for her crime, it would do nothing to help us understand why and how such horrors occur.

To those of you who say "so what? kill her! research be damned!" - I say it's sad that you would sacrifice untold numbers of children down the line on the altar of your righteous indignation. Who needs science, right? After all, everyone knows epilepsy is really demonic possession - stone the shaking fools!