No offense, but you're not going to win many adherents to your brand of "conservatism" with incoherent posts like that. I prefer to trust the assessment of the mental health professionals who've independently evaluated her (one of whom, I know for a fact, is no bleeding heart liberal, not by a long shot) who have said this woman was the most disconnected from reality, most deeply delusional patients they'd ever seen, over the assessment of some guy spouting off about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's pets on an internet bulletin board.
These docs are not hired guns for the defense, these are some of the top practitoners in their field in the fourth largest city in the United States. They've seen many thousands of very sick puppies over their careers, and they agree that she was one of, if not the, most profoundly ill psychotics they'd ever come across.
I wonder if some of the self-proclaimed conservatives & Christians on this board would have some much blood lust today if Ms. Yates had had an epileptic seizure while driving and killed her children plowing into a telephone pole. Andrea Yates was as morally culpable for what she did to her children as somebody who accidentally sets his house on fire after falling into a diabetic coma while barbecuing. Her brain chemistry is so thoroughly out of whack that she qualifies for entry in one of those textbooks about medical anomalies, for heaven's sake.
Lest you continue to entertain your stated misconception that my beliefs on this issue are predicated on any sort of bleeding heart feminism, let me set you straight: none of us here are "excusing evil" as you claim; we merely believe that it would be neither as just nor as humane to "play God" & execute this woman as it would be to kill the man with cognitive judgement so completely distorted by a brain tumor that he shoots up his family.
The peversely viscious brand of conservative christianity some folks are peddling on this thread has absolutely no appeal to me, 'Luke21', and never will. The self-proclaimed "christians" on this board spewing nasty ad hominem invectives against other religious conservatives who happen to disagree with you guys are wasting your time with me. And for those (not you Luke - you had the guts and the integrity to challenge me to my face) who felt the need to send me private messages to inform me that I am the spawn of the devil & will writhe in the flames of eternal damnation for disagreeing with them on this issue: peace be with you, folks, peace be with you.
Question: If these same mental health professionals that you trust came back in a few years and said she was "cured" and that she could be released, how would you feel?
Serious question, I'm not baiting.
Becky
Bovine excrement. You should know that there are large numbers of us out here who will never accept the twaddle pushed by you people who have never met a criminal you could't coddle.
She committed premeditated murder five times. She was able to plan and execute that plan. There are offices with highly paid people in them that don't have the planning ability of Yates, and yet you maintain that she is so exceptionally mentally deranged she can't be held accountable? You might have a point if her insanity manifested itself in any other way than killing children. But it doesn't.
Insanity that is so narrowly defined it only affects one action isn't insanity it is a lie.
And these juries that let child killers walk: These moral dunces should not be allowed within 100 yards of a courtroom. They ought to be locked up with the killers they set free.