Posted on 08/28/2002 5:29:46 AM PDT by CholeraJoe
Edited on 05/07/2004 7:33:59 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Jeanette Swanson was taking an antidepressant that can cause delusions and mania -- and is similar to the drug taken by Texas mom Andrea Yates, recently convicted of drowning her five children in a bathtub.
Swanson of Augusta is accused of shooting two of her children Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at greatfallstribune.com ...
New wrinkle in killings in Augusta, MT
Hardly
Augusta kids
By CAROLYNN BRIGHT, IR Staff Writer - 08/28/02
No death penalty for killings.
As shocking as the crimes Augusta ranch wife Jeannette Swanson stands accused of committing may be, she won’t pay with her life if she’s convicted.
“The circumstances of the crime are still under investigation, but it does not appear at this time that the offense meets the requirements for the state to seek the death penalty,” said Deputy County Attorney Carolyn Clemens Tuesday.
Montana law defines numerous guidelines framing when the death penalty applies to murder cases, she said.
Those include whether an offender has been previously convicted of deliberate homicide, whether torture was involved in the crime and whether the offender was incarcerated when the offense was committed.
Clemens’ announcement comes a day after prosecutors filed two counts of deliberate homicide against the 46-year-old woman for shooting and killing her 10-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son as they slept in their beds in the family’s rural home.
Swanson’s other two sons — ages 16 and 20 — also were at home at the time, but were not harmed. Neither was Swanson’s husband, Gene, who was sleeping in the yard in a camp trailer at the time of the shootings.
Swanson was arrested Monday after calling 911 just before 6 a.m. to report that she had shot her two children.
When authorities arrived at the ranch house located about 15 miles southwest of Augusta, they found Swanson waiting for them at the door and the children in their bedrooms, already dead.
An autopsy conducted on the children’s bodies Monday night confirmed what authorities already knew — the youngsters died from gunshot wounds, according to Clemens.
However, further analysis will be conducted to determine whether the bullets and bullet fragments recovered from the bodies of the victims were fired by a weapon seized at the scene of the crime, she said.
Court documents filed in the case indicated that Swanson’s oldest son reported to authorities that his mother had a .38 Smith and Wesson gun in her possession when she placed the 911 call.
According to Undersheriff Cheryl Liedle, Swanson continues to be held at the Lewis and Clark County Jail under suicide watch.
At an initial appearance before Justice of the Peace Wally Jewell via a video link Monday, Jewell ordered that Swanson be held without bond pending further proceedings in her case.
Court officials indicate that Swanson has the right to ask for a hearing on the bond issue, but Public Defender Randi Hood said Tuesday that her client does not wish to make such a request at this time.
As Augusta area residents continued to ponder the motive for such a brutal crime within their community Tuesday, Clemens declined to offer any more theories as to what drove the woman to allegedly murder her children.
“She is presumed to be innocent, and we do not want to jeopardize the investigation or her right to a fair trial by speculating about the reasons for the crime,” she said.
On Monday, Sheriff Sam McCormack said Swanson and her husband argued recently about her decision to enroll their youngest children in school in Augusta after home schooling the children on the family ranch for several years.
The children attended the school, which serves students from kindergarten through grade 12, for three days last week.
Clemens said she had no information to confirm newspaper reports that Swanson had been prescribed sleeping pills and the anti-depressant Paxil by a Great Falls health care provider in recent weeks.
All of the kids were hers not the husband's
Mea Culpa time for me. Yesterday on the thread I slammed unqualified parents who insist on homeschooling. I apologize unreservedly. Jeanette Swanson was a certified teacher who taught in the Great Falls School system for a number of years.
She sought Medical Attention in Great Falls about a week ago for symptoms of depression. The Tribune has verified that she was prescribed Paxil.
People that knew the family from Augusta to whom I spoke described them as hermits who stayed to themselves and seldom went into town.
One person told me, "I'm surprised she didn't snap sooner.
I would submit, that this angle reclassifies it, as well as the Yates murders, from Homeshooling, to the media blacked out anti-depressant category of assorted murders, school shootings and suicides.........
Warning: May cause nausea, diarrehea, vomiting, sleeplessness, sexual side effects and dementia, as well as homicial tendencies. Other than that you'll be happy, eh?
Better to be "unqualified" and doing a decent job than "qualified" and be a nut case.
And what training or experience backs up that judgement?The parents who homeschool are, I make no doubt, close to universally graduates of public or parochial high school. If any are not, they will learn while teaching their children--so even if the child's education suffers theoretically from the parents' limited competence in the subject matter, more total learning would occur. And that theoretical failure may in fact be positive rather than negative, serving as a challenge to the child to master what the parent does not command.
If the child is motivated to learn, s/he will tend to fill in any gaps as experience and further study allows. Failure to motivate the child to learn is the only way to really fail as an educator. And for a significant portion of their students, public schools routinely do fail to do that.
What curriculum would prepare a parent to homeschool? Any curriculum developed by the education establishment would, most assuredly, be intended more to discourage the prospective tutor than to empower her or him. Would the curriculum include "classroom management?" What?
One undergraduate and two graduate degrees plus five years of teaching experience at the graduate level. None of in education or education related courses.
You cannot legitimately teach a subject to anyone unless you have a grasp of the subject itself. If someone who barely finished high school themselves expects to be able to instruct their 15 year old in Algebra, they are seriously deluded.
I wouldn't be surprised if she's found not guilty by reason of insanity and walks after a few months in psych lockup.
That certainly hasn't been the history of these killings: Yates, Michael McDermott, the kid in San Diego on Celexa just sentenced in the last few weeks, Kip Kinkel, etc. etc.
The insanity defense doesn't work, for the most part, nor should it.
Watch what her lawyer does and says....that'll be the clue. Too bad we can't have full disclosure on who's paying these people.....might be revealing.
I would respectfully disagree, though, about the need for formal training. There are other, far more important characteristics for a parent to have, such as love, maturity, and plain ol' grit, in order to homeschool; parents need to have sound judgment and a good understanding of themselves (helpful to really any parent, whether their kids are in public/private/home school). I've just met too many smart, intelligent, wise people with very little/no formal education, and very immature, common-sense-lacking people with massive post-graduate degrees, who broke down my misconceptions about the need for formal educations.
There are so many amazing resources for the homeschooling parent -- we are more fortunate in that way than just about any other cohert of people in history. Heck, I taught myself to read before school started, even in the home of an enlisted military guy and his barely-english speaking wife in base housing -- just because of my access to just a few resources in those tender years.
I think the bottom line is freedom. Guess what, ladies, you have so many wonderful choices that your sisters before you never dreamed of, except for perhaps a few visionaries. For those who feel "peer pressure" to homeschool - get over it, grow up, and find new friends (I know, I know, you can't just find new family readily, and they can be a challenge); for those who feel "peer pressure" to NOT homeschool -- again, you should have control over your response to those forces. I think, overall, the regulatory and institutional risks that are still facing homeschoolers, aren't facing public school parents (e.g., intrusive government, NEA).
Just a few thoughts.
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