Woman who stoned sons to death acquitted

Woman who stoned sons to death acquitted

Sunday, April 4, 2004

BY LISA FALKENBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TYLER, Texas -- A woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons was acquitted of all charges by reason of insanity Saturday after a jury determined she did not know right from wrong during the killings.

A jury found that Deanna Laney was legally insane May 9 when she killed her two older sons, ages 6 and 8, in the front yard and left the youngest, now 2, maimed in his crib. Laney, 39, would have received an automatic life sentence had she been convicted of capital murder.

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

More at the Detroit Free-Press

I would imagine they will institutionalize her in a mental hospital?

where Andrea Yates should be

I still feel sorry for that poor, tortured woman, her husband and certainly for her dead children.

I guess that's Texas justice for you. :grr:

and honestly it surprised me the jury had some freaking sense. It does seem to be lacking somewhat in Texas.

You're right. :sheepish:

Stones: yes, bathtub: no

WTF? Not biblical enough or something?
I was going to post about Andrea Yates, too. The last I read about her a couple years ago, as soon as she got on medication and started realizing what she had done, her hell began. Her life is definitely over, thanks to her idiot husband and idiot beliefs.

Thank GOD I'm single!

And religious?

Gee, wonder why she got off?

Him and Susan Smith's husband

From the source article:

"Psychiatrists testified that 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. In a videotape played at her trial, Laney said she saw her youngest son play with a spear, hold a rock and squeeze a frog, and took them all as signs from God that she should kill her children."

I wonder if she was a fan of the "Left Behind" books.

I'm suprised she wasn't sentanced to community service as deputy Atny. General

Now there is a woman who believes in christian justice!

The woman was a nut. If you think that is "Christian justice" to kill her children, then you are pretty darn ignorant of what Christ actually had to say.

Have a look at Leviticus, you can kill your kids for damn near anything, stoning is the perscribed method.

She is following Gods law, isn't that what the Republicans are all about?

Prime canidate for Attny Gen.

Is part of the OLD Testament. Christians, by the very nature of their name, celebrate what happened when Christ was alive and that takes place in the, drumroll please, NEW Testament.

Then why do christian supporters of capital punishment cite Leviticus?

They probably also cite about a thousand other things.

The reality is that Christ set a new tone and Christians are supposed to embrace it. None of us is truly Christlike, so we all have our imperfections.

Actually i feel that Christians keep the old testament attached to the bible to keep Christ's teachings from being confused with Buddhism.

But they are Christianity.

....if what she did..doesn't warrent life in prison...then nobody should ever be....there shouldn't be such a thing as not guilty by reason of insanity because when a murder under any circumstances is committed you're insane. :nopity:

at all. Others are just plain selfish/cruel.

There is a difference between someone who *hears voices* and one who ohhh say ... want's some insurance money.

.....she heard voices...suuuure why not...sorry but it matters not WHY she did it...she did it and should suffer the consequences of her actions to the fullest extent of the law...regardless of any excuses after the fact.

she is and will then be told she crushed her children's heads with a rock. You have no compassion for her..? she wont remember what she did... when medicated. what if that happened to you.. ?

....the bible literally to the point of insanity either...I have about as much compassion for child killers as I do for *....and that isn't much at all....sorry but that's MY OPINION...you're entitled to have your own.

I am assuming that she has to go back to court as all NGRI convictees have to. NGRI means (in most states) that she will have to go to a state facility and undergo a "program". This "program" will be reviewed over and over and each review will mean that basically the clock starts again. At the end (20+ years) there will be another review of the entire process-her progress and the program used and it is more than likely that it will be rejected.

Even if it is not and she is "released" she will have stipulations set on her. She may have to "check in" once a month but in this case I would suspect that she will have very strict restrictions put on her. These could include having to call or report to her manager every time she wants to cross the city/county line. Meds surely will be administered throughout the rest of her life.

Again NGRI ( I deal with it quite a lot) is the single worst thing that can happen to you. You are never finished with such a sentence.

Hinkley included.

.....she should have to pay for what she did for the rest of her life!! :nopity:

to degrees and by measures but you never finish that sentence.

....for LIFE...since she still has one and her children died because of her hands in such a way and it was definitely premedidtated.....NO IF'S AND'S OR BUT'S regardless!

an illness.

I am not saying that she should be *free* mind you, but there is such a thing as insanity. And, that should be taken into consideration.

.....because as I said it's a form of insanity regardless...temporarily or other wise.

in-depth examinations by psychiatrists as well as documented history of time spent in mental institutions, confrontations with law enforcement, bizarre and irrational behavior, etc. are all brought in as evidence.

no, murder is not a form of insanity and you sound glib to say so. It can be a cold calculated plan to change a situation, gain some money, get rid of somebody unwanted, etc. just because it is immoral and abhorent does not make it "insane."

...as am I..regardless of how GLIB you think mine may sound..that's what I think murder is...INSANE..regardless of how it's attempted to be rationalized or excused! :eyes:

was that truly reported? or just your judgment that you obviously think yourself qualified to make? a finding of insanity by a jury indicates exactly the opposite.

the woman is schizophrenic and that is a hell beyond belief, in and of itself. the children are dead and not suffering but this woman will endure a living hell for the rest of her life. as a relative of a schizophrenia sufferer my heart goes out to her.

...they aren't qualified either....just made a determination from the facts they were given...I wasn't there to hear it all just the spin that's been reported in the media....her lawyers could pay off a boat load of *doctors* to claim she has an *illness* too regardless if it's the truth or not....the facts are she bashed her childrens brains in after thinking about it from her deluded fundie mentality...if she's does in fact have this mental deficency she should have been better supervised and medicated properly...but she wasn't and she brutally killed and should now be taken out of society for it.

that will detect when something is going terribly wrong in a family. Who knows how many cases of child abuse or murder were prevented or stopped when an adult at school noticed that a child was troubled?

http://reason.com/9811/col.olson.shtml

So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."

Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. "Why stoning?" asks North. "There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Thrift and ubiquity aside, "executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants." You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. "That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes," North continues, "indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians." And he may be right about that last point, you know.

Incidentally, the organization that publishes Gary North is in the trial's location of Tyler, Texas.

She was clearly crazier than this woman!

than drowning. That's the only difference that I can see in the two cases.

I don't care if she was "insane" or not. You commit a crime this heinous and you deserve the chair.