Posted on 05/13/2003 8:26:54 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Mother may not be sane, defense says
Issue of competence in boys' slayings recalls Yates drowning case
05/13/2003
TYLER – Pale, grim-faced and clutching her arms to her sides, Deanna "Dee" Laney walked into a courtroom for the first time Monday and listened to a court-appointed defense lawyer explain that she might not understand what was happening to her.
Tyler criminal defense lawyer F.R. "Buck" Files Jr. later told reporters that "everything about the case" suggested that she might not be sane.
The 38-year-old mother is charged with bashing the heads of her three sons with rocks, killing two of the boys, and then calling 911 to report what she'd done.
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State District Judge Cynthia Kent said she called the hearing to advise Mrs. Laney of her rights because a judge who presided over a similar hearing shortly after her Saturday arrest was concerned that she "seemed a little confused."
Authorities have said Mrs. Laney called 911 just before 1 a.m. Saturday to report that she'd killed her boys Joshua, 8, and Luke, 6, because God had told her to and stayed on the phone for more than 20 minutes calmly telling where she'd left their bodies and how to find her family's home in the rural community of New Chapel Hill.
A deputy found 14-month-old Aaron Laney still breathing in his crib but bleeding heavily from an open skull fracture and later found Joshua and Luke dead in the family's front yard with bloody rocks the size of dinner plates lying on their chests, according to an affidavit filed in the case.
Mrs. Laney's husband, Keith, 44, was asleep and was awakened when the deputy arrived to investigate Mrs. Laney's 911 call and began searching the family's neat, ranch-style brick home.
Aaron is at Children's Medical Center in Dallas, where a family friend said his condition appeared to be improving Monday.
Mrs. Laney's parents sat silently through her hearing, tearfully hugging friends and relatives before she was led in by sheriff's deputies.
AP Keith and Deanna Laney are shown with two of their children, Joshua Laney ( left) and Luke Allen Laney. |
A tall, thin woman, Mrs. Laney wore an ankle-length printed floral dress and clutched a wadded Kleenex. She appeared to watch the judge intently but took in the proceedings with little visible emotion.
Mr. Files initially told the judge that he was uncomfortable with allowing his client to answer questions.
"There obviously is an issue as to competency," he said. "I'm not sure if she can truthfully say that she understands what is going on."
But she quietly said "yes, your honor" and nodded repeatedly after he told her to respond to questions about whether she knew that she had the right to a lawyer and could not be forced to incriminate herself.
Yates case recalled
The bizarre slayings – and the parallels to a 2001 case in which Houston-area mother Andrea Yates drowned her five children – have stunned many in this East Texas county, particularly those in New Chapel Hill, where Mrs. Laney and her husband grew up.
News about the slayings immediately drew a flurry of national media to Tyler, and Judge Kent issued a broad gag order in the case Monday after arriving at the courthouse to find a satellite truck just outside to broadcast for CNN, the Fox News channel and NBC.
The order restricts both sides in the case from making public comment.
It directs lawyers, investigators and subpoenaed witnesses not to release any information not already made public in court pleadings or proceedings.
Mr. Files said he called Mrs. Yates' criminal defense lawyer, George Parnham of Houston, shortly after being asked to take Mrs. Laney's case.
"Obviously, anyone who looks at Andrea Yates and looks at this case would draw some comparisons, just at first blush," he said after the hearing. "Where we go, I can't tell you."
Mr. Parnham said he talked generally with Mr. Files about the difficulty of handling such a case and the team of psychiatric experts that he assembled.
"I told him he was on the ride of his life. It's just going to be a horrible experience," Mr. Parnham said.
District Attorney Jack Skeen played down questions about Mrs. Laney's mental state, saying that her demeanor at her earlier hearing caused him no concern.
He said it was still far too early to say whether his office, known for aggressive capital murder prosecutions, will seek the death penalty against Mrs. Laney.
Like Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Laney was a devout Christian who homeschooled her children. Mrs. Yates called 911 after killing her children and later told police that she'd been goaded by the devil to kill them.
Mrs. Yates was tried for capital murder, and Harris County prosecutors fought off defense efforts to have her declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. But a Harris County jury that heard extensive evidence of her history of mental illness, hospitalizations for attempted suicides and repeated diagnoses of extreme post-partum depression opted to sentence her to life in prison.
Mrs. Laney's relatives and family friends have said that she was a devoted, loving mother who gave no clue before Saturday's slayings that anything might be amiss.
On Sunday, Sheriff J.B. Smith said Mrs. Laney was often heard singing gospel hymns as she paced her jail cell, where she is being held on $3 million bail and has been placed on a suicide watch.
He said she sometimes crawled into a fetal position and sometimes cried out "Oh, no!" – as if she was somehow comprehending what she'd done.
Triggers for illness
Dr. Lucy Puryear, a Houston psychiatrist who testified for Mrs. Yates' defense, said a post-partum psychosis, like the condition Mrs. Yates' suffered from at the time she killed her children, typically occurs soon after childbirth.
Although any assessment without talking to family and others who knew Mrs. Laney "is just speculation," Dr. Puryear said, the Tyler-area mother could have begun suffering from post-partum depression after her last child was born and grown progressively more ill.
An environmental trigger for psychiatric illness in women is being home alone with young children and being socially isolated, Dr. Puryear said.
What little is known publicly about Mrs. Laney's case suggests that she might have had "something like bipolar disorder where people get very agitated, have religious delusions of God speaking to them, and they have some sort of mission or purpose or duty that they have to carry out and sometimes end up doing very horrible things," Dr. Puryear said. "It sounds pretty clearly like she wasn't in her right mind."
E-mail lhancock@dallasnews.com
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She woke her 2 "older" children, ages 6 and 8, up and lead them one at a time into the backyard and bashed their heads in with "rocks the size of dinner plates", and left them lying where she killed them. She went into the 16 month old's room and bashed his skull in with another rock while he slept, cast aside the rock in the bedroom, and covered his face with a pillow. She called 911, TOLD THEM SHE KILLED HER CHILDREN, and spent 20 minutes on the phone giving the poor dispatcher detailed instructions on how to get to her house. When the deputy arrived, she told him how to find her children, and said she "couldn't go there", couldn't look at what she had done.
All this nonsense about post-partum depression, home-schooling and Christianity (sons were named Luke and Joshua, definitely evil! end < /sarcasm>), and speculation about insanity blows my mind. She knows the difference between right and wrong - she called 911. She used the word "killed." Hello?
I don't want to sound uncompassionate, yet there's been too many of these cases. If society steps in too soon and investigates the mother for bizarre behavior, then they're violating her rights. If a sick individual is given the freedom to raise her kids, and they end up murdered....sheesh, where's the happy medium, and what can society do to protect its most innocent young children?
Perhaps "rationalize" would be a better word than "justify"? That is what I am seeing. Rationalization. Post-partum depression, mental illness, Christianity, home schooling etc are all being discussed as if these are at the root of her actions. All without knowing this woman. Her own pastor-slash-brother(in law?) can't even explain it, though he once said this:
"I'm sure there will be people who will resist the death penalty because it was a moment of insanity, so the death penalty will be cruel to people who kill their innocent children," Mr. Bell said of the case reported in The Post. "You explain that logic to me."
However, in this country, we do not kill people for being mentally ill
We do execute people under the law who have committed murder. Even if they are "mentally ill." Clinton did it.
From previous articles, her family and friends describe her as being loving, doting, and adoring with her children, a family woman, a church-goer. Although, she also "kept to herself."
Does that equal insanity? All that culminated in a "moment of insanity." Unless someone is able to prove conclusively a SERIES of actions or behaviors pointing to instability, and leading to murder, I can never buy the insanity/mental illness defense. It is seized upon as a valid defense by a good number of murderers, even if they AREN'T "insane", merely because it has worked before. It is becoming the easy excuse of defense lawyers who have accepted the role of protector to someone who murdered innocents in cold blood.
When did I say that I could?
I understand that you believe in mental illness. I don't.
Andrea Yates underwent treatment, including medication, for 2 years after being diagnosed with psychosis, postpartum depression and suicide attempts. She then killed her 5 children.
So, do you believe that God really told her to kill her children?
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