So, lemme get this straight....

[conuly]

This woman killed her son.

She drugged him, then put a plastic bag over his head so he couldn't breathe, and waited for him to suffocate.

Premeditated, cold-blooded murder.

But instead of being treated as a murderer, she's out on bail, being charged with manslaughter, and the pastor of her village says that they feel profound sadness and sympathy - for her, not for her dead son.

I wonder, if I just started killing people who were inconvenient to me, could I get profound sadness and sympathy too? I've got a list of people I don't like all that much....


_{Taken from wakasplat}

Comments

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

But- I- Duh- Bwah.

How? WTF How?

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

Well, what you don't say is that she has an overwheming history of psychiatric problems. Obviously murder isn't right, but we do have such defenses as temporary insanity, even not guilty by reason of insanity. perhaps she qualifies for one of those.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Well, should you ever be in exactly her position, I hope you are judged with the same mercy.

[conuly]

I hope *not*. If I ever kill somebody, and I wasn't absolutely insane at the time, I don't want people acting like I'm some sort of martyr or saint.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Note also that, probably not quite in a deliberate contrast, they also are running an ad next to that article that says:
"The NSPCC is working to shield children from abuse. Click here to find out how a small contribution will make a big difference."

[conuly]

Lots of people have overwhelming histories of psychiatric problems, and they aren't treated like this. Remember Andrea Yates? There's somebody who deserved a bit of sympathy, but she didn't get it.

Whereas this woman is being told that she was a wonderful mother, very conscientious, and that because her son was hard to take care of, it was okay to kill him.

[conuly]

*re-reads article*

Does it say in the article that she has a history of psychatric problems, or in another article? Because all I see in this article is that her son had Downs and was autistic, and that she had trouble taking care of him.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

And that, if true, is wrong. She must be a Christian.

Here it is:

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

At a 15-year-minute hearing at Reading Crown Court, Markcrow — watched by family members including her sons Martin and Jonathan — denied murder and admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Nicholas Browne, QC, prosecuting, told the judge that in view of the “overwhelming” psychiatric evidence, the Crown accepted the manslaughter plea and asked the judge to direct that the murder charge remain on file.

//

According to this article, there is "overwhelming psychiatric evidence" of "diminished responsibility" on the part of the mother.

[malantha.livejournal.com]

That would be the beauty of contextual ads. They're placed automatically based on keywords in the article and sometimes you happen end up with terribly inappropriate results. :P

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true... It makes for some rather strange combinations at one discussion list I run -- the subject is focused on celebrating the entire autism spectrum, and half the time the contextual ads that show up are cure-focused. *sigh*

I remember one time I was looking at old discussion group messages (via Gmail) about the little autistic boy that was killed through chelation treatment a couple of months ago, and the Gmail ad alongside was for curing kids of autism through chelation. *headdesk*

Re: Here it is:

[conuly]

I understand the phrase "overwhelming psychiatric evidence", but what does "diminished responsibility" mean? It can't mean what it looks like it means, because that wouldn't make sense.

Re: Here it is:

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

It means, I believe, that her mental condition relieves her of some responsibility. Not perhaps "temporary insanity", but enough to downgrade her from "murder" to "manslaughter".

I'm no lawyer, and I'm no doctor, but that is my take on it.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

(Not a reply entirely to you, so I know you get some of the stuff I'm about to say.)

All murderers should be judged with mercy, as far as I'm concerned. Not just when they murder devalued kinds of people. And murdering a devalued kind of person should not make the murderer into a martyr or a saint.

What amazes me in all this is how the sympathy always jumps to the killer. What about her son? Can you imagine living with your mother your whole life, probably assuming she loves you, and then one day she drugs you and sticks a plastic bag over your head and KILLS YOU? Or, like the Canadian mother awhile back (the one who now has an Autism Society job), sticks you in the bathtub and holds you under until you drown?

As I said somewhere else today, I know that if my parents walked in the door and shot me, right now, there's a good chance they wouldn't even face a murder charge. Because I'm clearly well within the range of the sort of people whose parents get excused from murder on the grounds that it's really easy to parent us. Never mind that I don't live with them. Never mind that I get services. That hasn't mattered in the past. Fortunately for me, my parents aren't the type to kill anyone, because if they were, they could get away with killing me if they wanted to, given the assorted labels that have been attached to me.

And people would then talk about how much my parents have suffered from having me around, how much I had suffered my whole life, and how now my suffering was over and shouldn't we go easy on my poor, pitiful parents who'd done all they could for me.

No. No way. That's just wrong. Murder is murder, and having a disabled child is not defense for it. (In fact, there was one case also in the UK I think, where a father murdered his disabled child, was let out because he couldn't possibly be a danger to anyone since after all it was the stress of raising a disabled child and so on and so forth... and then went on to murder his non-disabled child by which point the courts realized their mistake — far too damn late for his kids.)

Re: Here it is:

[conuly]

*nods slightly*

I can see what her lawyer argued, and that the court accepted it, but I'm not sure it means what you think it means. It could mean that the lawyer said "look, see how hard it was to take care of him for his entire life? Of course there was enough stress that she snapped!", and that's not an acceptable argument, to me.

I'll wait for more news on the subject.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

er, "it's really easy to parent us" should either read "it's not easy to parent us" or "it's really difficult to parent us".

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

Further to what I was saying...

I've seen a lot of people who have legitimate concerns about the justice system, take situations like this to argue that the way the murderer is being considered an okay person is good, because murderers deserve to be seen as people.

I have absolutely no trouble with seeing murderers as people. But I do not think that it is okay to always bring up "It's okay to see this murderer as a person because of the overwhelming stress of being around this devalued kind of person." If a person argues that murderers should be treated as people (and I believe that they should), then they should rest their argument on more general grounds, and not applaud when the fact that a murderer is seen as a person is mainly happening by virtue of the fact that the victim is seen as not quite a person.

Murderers are people. But so are murder victims. Even severely disabled ones. I have a personal stake in not being a murder victim (I almost was at one point, and my murderers would have been shown far more mercy than even this woman, by virtue of the fact that they'd not have been charged with anything at all most likely). Which means I have a personal stake in seeing that there is no class of people (including murderers for that matter) who it is seen as okay to kill (outside of self-defense/other defense situations where it happens), including but not limited to any of the classes of people I happen to belong to.

Valuing murderers as people (which I believe in, despite having faced murderers before so this isn't a theoretical belief, I believe my would-be murderers are people and should be treated as people) should not be done by devaluing a class of common murder victims (such as disabled people). And talking about the mercy shown murderers of devalued people as a good thing (when the mercy is coming out of that devaluation, primarily) does not show the whole picture and in fact is highly damaging, a segmented view that almost looks right but isn't.

Re: Here it is:

[eofs.livejournal.com]

No, it can't mean that. It is a legal term referring specifically to reduced/impaired mental capacity. If the lawyer had argued it was stress or whatever I'm sure The Times would have used a more appropriate term.

Re: Here it is:

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

I'm just going by "overwhelming psychiatric evidence". Of course, we do not know what that is.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

She was sixty-seven, and her husband had died less than a month ago. They had, presumably, been married for over 37 years. That doesn't justify committing murder, but I can feel for her. Perhaps she had come to see her son as a burden, after 36 years of needing to take care of him, and had come to believe that no one apart from herself and her husband would ever take care of him. Perhaps she felt, after losing her husband, that she could not go on alone.

If this is what happened, none of this justifies her killing her son: but it would explain it. And if she really felt that there was no one but her and no alternative, then I can see why a judge would have called it manslaughter - not because (at least, I hope not because) he felt the man she killed wasn't worth it, but because she genuinely would have been in a state that one could call temporary insanity. Deep mourning is a form of temporary insanity, when you can do and believe quite enormously stupid, appalling things. She should have asked for help. Someone should have realised she needed help.

[ancarett]

What gets me in the wave of sympathy for this woman is all the people who could have helped provide or arrange respite care, get this family the intervention it needed before tragedy took hold and murder resulted.

She's certainly more culpable than her neighbours suggest. They're certainly more at fault for failing to help than any of them realize.

[lordalfredhenry.livejournal.com]

That should be a hate crime and not some "crime of compassion" bullshit. What a sick, sick, sick fucking hag she is. (actually sorry, I can't find another word atm for being so pissed off and realize this is giving hags everywhere a bad rep)

[lordalfredhenry.livejournal.com]

sounds more like one of those horrible Centrist agnostics to me.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Yes, someone could have given her a break.

And IIRC, doesn't the UK have mechanisms in place for 'carers', as they call family members and friends who have to take care of someone in their lives? I did a quick search on carer/respite/UK and found a number of programs, from a few hours long to overnight.

As a recent conversation came up about how my son seems to have something (hearing problem/autism/unknown problem) someone did pipe up "you'll be eligible for some respite care" in a conversation. It's there. You would think the woman or her son's doctor would have suggested it.

It would be easier for me to find a way to get a break than to kill any of my children, especially in the fashion that she did. To me, snapping is grabbing a gun and shooting or a knife and stabbing after a particularly shitty episode of dealing with difficulty. To go, get pills, feed pills, watch my child suffer, there is time to put a stop to the madness and think DAMNIT I NEED HELP.

I feel for her, as I would for anyone that nuts, but it is the community's reaction that disturbs me the most.

They could have stopped it, because at least THEY were sane the whole time.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity, where do you get that it's premeditated? Because the son was drugged? Zopiclone is a prescription drug used to combat sleeping problems. It sounds quite possible that he would be awake in the night (to do that shouting) and although we can only speculate on the reasons why, we can similarly speculate that taking such drugs could be routine, or at least something that was occasionally done for some valid reason. In which case it's the suffocation that she did to kill him, which is certainly not necessarily a premeditated act.

I am in no way excusing what she did, just saying that calling it premeditated on the evidence in that article (and I've checked the Guardian's, it's almost identical) is jumping to conclusions.