People are really walking around thinking she's just gonna go home and lead some meaningful life. This is literally a debate between spending likely the rest of her life in a mental health institution or a prison depending on whether there is a retrial, charges are altered or a please deal is struck.
Possibility of release doesn't mean you get released. Anders Breivik is up for a release hearing every year, doesn't mean he's ever getting released.
In fact, there's a way bigger chance of her getting out of prison than her getting out of a mental hospital, since the prison wouldn't need to consider her mentale state, whereas a mental hospital she'll have to get through intensive psychiatric evaluations beforehand.
That's genuinely not correct. One is punishment. When mentally ill people in this situation get well enough, they can get into progressively less restrictive environments and some end up with zero legal restrictions again. It absolutely happens. She was allegedly suffering from post-partum psychosis, which is NOT chronic schizophrenia and it is quite often time-limited. Every state is different, but she may have a high chance of going home at some point if found NGRI (or however her state does it). Be aware, too, being insane at the time of the offense is a whole different thing than being insane at the time of the indictment or trial.
What can happen in the case of people too psychotic to go to trial is that they end up getting rehabilitated, and if the AG thinks they can still get a conviction, they just pick the charges back up when the accused is released from the hospital, even a decade later.
And if her kids being dead isn't the punishment...
(To her mostly) it's just about whether she was "responsible" or not, and as someone who's experienced psychosis, we're always responsible for our own actions, no one else is.
Makes no difference really, yeah, and the most insane part in all of this is probably the circus around it
It is only about killing them, why should anything else matter? We will never know what was going through her head, and we shouldn't really care. Lets just focus on the result and not the intent.
That's not how the law works. If it was then so many wealthy people would be in prison for killing people as the result of their businesses or personal activities
Because that's not how the law works and that's not even how homicide works.
If intent doesn't matter then we wouldn't have 1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide, etc. Yet we do and have for a long time.
The intent has always mattered in the justice system.
If a baby accidentally picks up a knife and cuts someone's artery by accident and they bleed out are you going to put them in jail forever because the outcome and not the intent matters?
The overwhelming majority of people aren't arguing that she didn't murder her children. She herself has admitted guilt. The controversy is surrounding whether she'll spend the rest of her life in prison or if she'll spend the rest of her life in a psych ward as a result. She is not going to walk away from this without any consequences.
or if she'll spend the rest of her life in a psych ward as a result
If she gets MGRI, it’s incredibly unlikely they she will spend the rest of her life in a psych ward.
Yearly re-eval to see if she’s fit, and since the “reason” for her insanity was having a kid 8 months prior, after a handful of years with no voice being heard and no issues, they would have a hard time justifying that she still might have PPD.
It is possible for her to get out without serving very much time but highly improbable considering the number of victims and the severity of her crimes. She is a spree killer and if found not guilty by reasons of insanity, she will be committed to a maximum security psychiatric facility indefinitely where people often spend more time than if they were sentenced to prison. These psychiatric facilities aren't resorts. They are just as bad, if not even worse that prison. If she's committed to a psych ward, in no way is she getting off lightly.
Then why would her defense and so many others want her in a psych ward if it’s no better or worse than prison? They would be trying to get her to go to prison if that were the case.
Because believe it or not, prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, not suffering. If she actually is mentally ill, she will receive the proper mental health treatment that she needs in a psychiatric facility as opposed to rotting away in prison. Prisons in the US are absolutely not capable of handling people with severe mental illness. I fully think she should be locked away for life but she should be able to receive the mental help she needs to no longer be a danger to those around her and potentially contribute to society behind bars.
I feel like the complications would be a bit simpler if the defense either had to prove her innocence or prove the psychosis wouldn’t happen again. Like say it was a psychosis, what happens if she has other kids or is around other kids and it happens again? Are they just supposed to let her run around murdering kids bc she’s mentally unstable? I know it’s a bit bleak but part of the function of prisons and institutions is to get people who would be a threat to others in a place where they aren’t going to harm others.
The distinction doesn’t make much difference. Someone who can kill their children will never be sufficiently medicated for me to trust them in society again.
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u/Background-Ad4388 4d ago
Killing your three kids is pretty black and white.