Posted on 04/16/2004 10:33:47 PM PDT by Indy Pendance
BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — The body of a 5-year-old boy was found in an oven at his home Friday, and his mother's boyfriend was charged with capital murder. The suspect, Kenneth Pierott, 27, previously had been found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1996 slaying of his handicapped sister.
Pierott was arraigned and jailed Friday night in the death of Tre-Deven Odoms.
The child's mother, Kathy Jo Odoms, found her son's body in the oven Friday morning, Justice of the Peace Paul Brown said. The burners on the stovetop were turned on, the oven was not, he said.
The boy had no visible injuries, Brown said. Autopsy results were expected Monday.
Odoms told police she woke up Friday morning because she was hot and smelled gas, The Beaumont Enterprise reported in its online edition Friday. She found the burners were on and turned them off. She discovered the boy's body after Pierott left the house.
Pierott spent six months in state mental hospitals beginning in 1998, after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the December 1996 beating death of his 25-year-old sister, who had cerebral palsy.
Court documents obtained by the Enterprise show Pierott hit his sister in the head with a metal dumbbell. He was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
I'd be loathe to take the word of an idiot as Gospel; and the defense will make hay of the notion that such an one cannot make an intelligent waiver of his rights against self-incrimination. He could be covering for the mother; he could be in fear of the mother; he might feel confession to this crime is absolution for past misdeeds; he may actually believe he did the deed when he did not!
I trust the physical evidence.
In the meantime, however, the confession is enough to hold him....and that's good; but I don't think the investigators will lay their bets on it for a finding of guilty: there needs to be more....and much more is waiting to be discovered.
Why does insanity qualify a monstrous individual for a free pass to a cushy hospital and early release? If this was a rabid dog it would have been put to death. So it should be with mentally deranged people who kill. They must be put to death posthaste.
Why? Dead is dead? Why should justice be denied?
If they don't have the capacity of right vs. wrong, why do we trust them to roam the streets?????
If they cannot distinguish right from wrong they should be put to death. Why the special privelege? It is bizarre. Murder is murder.
So you would spare the life of a rabid dog who severed someone's windpipe? It was not in control of its faculties either. "Responsible" means that a murder was committed. Mental state is irrelevant. NG is justice denied and a travesty.
If he is truly insane then his confession can't count for much can it? Or maybe it shows how well he's progressed toward full recovery and should be let loose again. It sounds more though to me that his insanity is self-induced from very voluntary drug use. If buying and using drugs makes you insane, then you should definitely be held accountable for all your actions while doped up.
What I meant was that if we have a current system where insane people are not put to death, then they certainly should not be released on the streets.
I don't even know if I support the death penalty anyways. On one hand, I feel anger at the sickness of murderers, rapists, and child molesters... but does killing them make it "even"?
As far as the "special priveledge", it's not my call, but that is the law as it stands right now.
As far as your "murder is murder" remark, did you know that when the state executes someone, "homicide" is put on their death certificate as cause of death?
I hear what you're saying, but I'm just not so sure that justice = state ordered murder.
Following your logic:
We experiment on animals, why not humans??
We can clone animals, why not humans??
We eat animals, why not humans??
We keep animals as pets, why not humans??
We kill animals when they are sick or old, why not humans??
You are comparing apples with oranges, FRiend.
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