Legally Insane

[Sally Atticum]

<i>See, this woman sounds legally insane to me. This strikes me as someone who
sincerely didn't know the difference between right and wrong at the time she
committed the homicides. That is the test under Texas law.It has gone to the
jury at this point. I am surprised the prosecution is asking for life.
Apparently all 5 psychiatrists, including the prosecution's, said she was
insane. </i>


In interview, mother details delusions that spurred her to kill sons
John Springer

Court TV
Thursday, April 1, 2004 Posted: 11:11 AM EST (1611 GMT)

TYLER, Texas (Court TV) -- Dressed in white pajamas, Deanna Laney slipped out
of bed without disturbing her husband of 18 years and headed down the hall to
kill her children.

It was 11:30 p.m. on the Friday before Mother's Day last year, and God was
speaking to the 39-year-old, devoutly religious housewife again.

The Lord told Laney the end was near, He was coming and she needed to kill her
sons to prove her complete and unconditional faith in Him, Laney told a
forensic psychiatrist in December.

"That feeling hit me. It's time. It's time," Laney says in a videotape of the
interview played for jurors Wednesday at her capital murder trial.

On the tape, Laney sobs quietly as she describes psychotic episodes, including
delusions and hallucinations, she had for fours years. She describes using
heavy rocks to end the lives of her sons Joshua, 8, and Luke, 6, and to
severely injure 14-month-old Aaron.

"I thought I was being told by the Lord to do this. I believe that with all my
heart," Laney told psychiatrist Park Dietz.

Prosecutors hired Dietz soon after Laney placed a chilling 911 call to calmly
report the murders. Though Laney is charged with capital murder, Dietz and
another prosecution psychiatrist agreed with defense experts that Laney was so
mentally ill she did not know killing her sons was wrong.

Laney told Dietz she believed she and Andrea Yates, another Texas woman who
killed her children, were chosen by God to bear witness to the imminent end of
the world. Likening herself to the Virgin Mary after learning from the Angel of
the Lord that she would soon bear the son of God, Laney said she decided to
"ponder" the delusional communication from God.

"I believed with all my heart it was the Lord telling me that, but I couldn't
figure out why," Laney said. "I don't understand. Why? What purpose?"

Why Laney killed her sons is the central issue at the trial, now in its third
day. The defense maintains Laney is not criminally responsible for the boys'
deaths because she was legally insane at the time and could not fully
appreciate her actions.

Though prosecutors are not expected to ask jurors to return a guilty verdict,
Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham asked Dietz many questions
Wednesday to get at the issue of whether Laney knew what she was doing was
wrong.


Dietz testified that Laney knew right from wrong, but believed she was on a
mission from God.
Dietz, the 13th witness to testify, said Laney certainly knew that murder was
illegal and that her husband would have tried to stop her if he knew what she
was thinking.

Laney, he testified, sincerely believed she was on a mission from God.

"I don't think she was thinking about state law when she was doing this, and
struggling to carry out God's will," Dietz said.

Dietz said Laney described her "spiritual warfare" during their two-hour talk
in December, her internal turmoil over God and Satan, good and evil, and
finally life and death.

She did not want to kill her children, Dietz said, and resisted when she
thought God told her to kill the boys either by stabbing or strangulation.

Laney said she finally decided to use large rocks -- weighing from 3 to 14
pounds ? to commit the killings after she tripped over a rock while
hallucinating in the front yard of her five-acre property in New Chapel Hill.

Laney said God was commanding that the boys be killed in increasingly violent
ways because her resistance signified a lack of faith in Him.

"Each time it was getting worse and worse, the way it had to be done," she
said, explaining that she decided rocks would be preferable to strangulation.

Seizing on Dietz's testimony about Laney's hesitancy to kill her children,
Bingham asked the expert whether this proved she may have been sane at some
point. In other words, he reasoned, if she truly believed in God's
infallibility wouldn't she carry out His commandment without hesitation?

"If it's the word of God ... and she doesn't know her God is wrong, why does
she resist?" Bingham asked.

"Because she loves her children," Dietz replied. "She did not want to kill her
children. This was not her decision. She wanted to be able to raise and love
and nurture her children, whom she described as precious boys."

Dietz added, "For her this is a conflict of what she desired and what God
wills, and she struggled over whether to obey God and her desire to keep her
children."

The prosecution's fifth and final witness, forensic psychiatrist Edward Gripon
of Beaumont, Texas, agreed that Laney was not sane when she killed her
children.

"The presence of mental illness in this particular individual is rather
obvious," Gripon testified. "She's actually quite mentally ill, in my opinion."
Gripon offered his opinion that the question of Laney's mental health condition
is relatively easy for experts compared to the difficult one jurors will have:
Deciding if the defendant was legally insane when she killed Joshua and Luke,
and seriously injured Aaron.

If acquitted by reason of insanity, Laney likely would face involuntary
commitment to a secure mental hospital. If convicted, she faces life in prison.
The defense will call its first witness Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. The trial is
being broadcast by Court TV.


<p><br><b>Laura k</b>
<br>

<i>qualis artifex pereo</i><p></font>
<p>

[Sally Atticum]

Texas Woman Who Killed Sons Acquitted

Apr 4, 9:02 AM (ET)

By LISA FALKENBERG

TYLER, Texas (AP) - A woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of
her sons was acquitted of all charges by reason of insanity Saturday after a
jury determined she did not know right from wrong during the killings. A jury
found that Deanna Laney was legally insane May 9 when she killed her two older
sons, ages 6 and 8, in the front yard and left the youngest, now 2, maimed in
his crib.

Laney, 39, would have received an automatic life sentence had she been
convicted of capital murder.

Laney broke into tears as the verdict was read. Her husband, Keith Laney, sat
solemnly with his head down. A few jurors cried and struggled to maintain their
composure.

State law allows Laney to be committed to a maximum security state hospital.
Medical evaluations will dictate when she will be released. She will remain at
the Smith County Jail until a hearing regarding her transfer.


Defense attorney Tonda Curry said the verdict doesn't mean Laney escaped
punishment.

"Now and for the rest of her life, the punishment and torment that's going on
in her own head is more significant and more damaging to her than anything the
criminal justice system could have done, other than death," Curry said.

All five mental health experts consulted in the case, including two for the
prosecution and one for the judge, concluded that a severe mental illness
caused Laney to have psychotic delusions that rendered her incapable of knowing
right from wrong during the killings - the standard in Texas for insanity.

Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said had no regrets about taking
the case to trial.

"This is a case that the citizens of this county needed to make the decision
on," he said.

Jurors deliberated about seven hours before reaching their verdict in the
deaths of 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Luke, and the beating of Aaron. The
baby was found bleeding in his crib while the other two were found with their
skulls smashed in the front yard.

Defense attorneys argued that insanity was the only reason why a deeply
religious mother who homeschooled her children would kill two of them and maim
another without so much as a tear.

"There was no crying," Curry said. "She was insane. There is no other answer."

Psychiatrists testified that Laney believed she was divinely chosen by God -
just as Mary was chosen to bear Christ - to kill her children as a test of
faith and then serve as a witness after the world ended. In a videotape played
at her trial, Laney said she saw her youngest son play with a spear, hold a
rock and squeeze a frog, and took them all as signs from God that she should
kill her children.

In closing arguments earlier Saturday, prosecutors portrayed the killings last
Mother's Day weekend as deceptively planned and coldly executed.


(AP) Defense attorney F. R. "Buck" Files Jr. , right, puts his arm around
Deanna Laney, left, as Judge...
Full Image


"It was graphic, it was horrific and it was brutal," Bingham told the jury.

Bingham pounded his fist in his hand as he recounted Joshua's killing: "He got
strike after strike after strike on his head to the point that his brains were
coming out of his head like liquid."

Prosecutors said that even if Laney believed she was doing right by God, she
had to have known she was doing wrong by state law. Her first call, they
pointed out, was to 911 to summon authorities.

The 911 tape was among the evidence jurors reviewed during deliberations.
Jurors also had asked for psychiatric testimony to resolve a disagreement over
why Deanna Laney stopped beating Aaron, then 14 months old, but they reached a
verdict before receiving the transcript.

Psychiatrists testified that Laney couldn't finish killing the baby, and that
she told God, "You're just going to have to do the rest." Prosecutors said that
action indicated Laney knew right from wrong and that if she chose to disobey
God's orders by not killing Aaron, she could have disobeyed his orders to kill
the other two.

Bingham said Aaron, who lives with his father, suffered permanent injuries in
the attack.

<p><br><b>Laura k</b>
<br>

<i>qualis artifex pereo</i><p></font>
<p>