Maybe...
I am trying to really absorb everyones comments here and see both sides of the argument...but I am more than a tad bias being the mother of an infant who died at an early age of SIDS...so I have little if no sympathy for any mother who takes the life of her own child...
I hate him for his lack of actions, and his actions that contributed to this...and wish he could see some serious jail time whereby his cell-mates brand him a child killer also.....
And the other side of me wants to say AGAIN...there are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many support systems in this screwy world we live in..........regardless of how mental she was.....so long as she wasn't a drooling, babbling idiot...she could quite possibly have gotten some REAL help from SOMEWHERE.....
I wonder if her psych Dr is harboring any guilt for not "seeing the signs"????
That's certainly how the defense is painting her, successfully it appears. And while it's shaping up like the husband is culpable, culpability is not the same as responsibility. She could have chosen escape... she chose murder. He could have chosen to get her help... he chose to increase her burden.
We all knew the feminists would try to make hay with this case. Hmmff.. making political hay over a mentally ill woman and the bodies of five dead children... they know no shame.
I would think her Doc must be making himself ill over this but that would assume he is a decent human being and if she is truly as bad as the psych reports indicate, he is less than an exemplar human being for his lack of proper care for her.
This woman is guilty but it is a sad case. Her husband is not guilty of killing the children but he is guilty of choosing to see what he wanted to see and have more children with a mentally defective wife even though she could not handle the ones she had. Did he care that the mental disease could be passed on to more children?
When Andrea called him at work - she said "I've finally done it" (or something similar). So, she must have told him earlier of her desire to kill the children. If she had not, she would have said "I've done something to the children". If she had told him earlier - why in the xxxx didn't he arrange for those children to have someone else there also. Why didn't he then get them into public school where they would be away from a mother considering killing them?
IMO he didn't because he refuses to see anything but what he wants to see. His desire for a traditional family with his wife teaching them is more important than the fact that his children are in danger. With a sick and dangerous mother, the children need to look to a sane father to see that they are protected - he failed them.
He may not be guilty of murder but he failed those children and now they are dead. What about his traditional family now? Another thing, how can a man continue to love and protect a woman who has killed five of his children. Where is the anger, and fury?
Evidently she was drooling and babbling. Repeating an earlier comment...the next event will be to sue the psychiatrist.
Note to anyone who keeps piping up with the "she could have left, she chose the wrong path...." Mental illness is CHEMICAL, not moral etc. Diabetics don't choose their bodies' response to sugar. People this mentally ill, by definition, are incapable of rational action.
Since we are acting as the jury here: my vote is too commit the women forever. What would that be, murder with no parole? Not the death penalty.