she will probably walk on an insanity plea like all the rest do. We had a woman here remove her babies arms and she did no jail time. I really get ticked off that somehow being crazy means you don't ALSO need to do jail time...'splain?
The insanity defense is legitimate. THere are people who really are crazy, in the legal sense: they don't know what they are doing is wrong. Or they think its "right" like they are saving their children from Hell, or that their friend is actually the Devil. I don't do criminal law, but I keep track of it. There are definately people out there, who by reason of mental illness, do not know what they are doing, or know what they are doing but are so far gone that they sincerely believe that its the right thing. Often these people are treatable.
That said, whatever is wrong with her, Caylee's mom is NOT legally insane. This was premediated, she tried to hide it, she constructed lies. My experience with real insanity cases is that they are generally not deeply premediated (such as the internet searches) and often the mother is perfectly willing to say what she did, and why. Sometimes she even calls the cops! Caylee's mom may be nuts, but she is not legally insane.
As for "getting off" believe me, you are often better off being convicted than being found insane. There are people who gamed the system, where found insane, and are now housed in asylums . . . and they are begging to go to jail instead. One, if you are found insane you are confined in an asylum until you are found sane. In many cases, this means forever. Two, you have a lot less autonomy and freedom in an asylum than in jail. Three, you actually have fewer rights in an asylum than jail, because you are presumed insane. Yes, some people found insane (particularly those who had a psychotic break) do walk fairly shortly afterwards . . . but many spend a long, long time confined somewhere much less "fun" than jail.
Ill give you an example of a classic insanity case. A woman in WV had several children. She had had mental problems before. Her husband was a monster . . .he beat her, publicly humiliated her, then abandoned her. She was very, very poor. THe only person looking after this poor soul was her aunt. Everyone knew she had problems. She became convinced that the Devil was after her, and her children. Finally, she locked her children in their room with the Bible and commanded them to pray. SHe was afraid the Devil was coming for them. SHe had a gun. She locked herself in a different room. She prayed. She saw a figure moving outside. She thought it was the Devil. She fired. And kiled her aunt. Once she realized what she had done, she immediatley called the police, and told them that she had killed her aunt who was possessed by the devil.
She was not proscuted at all. The police and the proscutor could find no motive, no reason why she woudl do this OTHER than her delusions. Her children were packed off to a relative, and she was sent to a mental hospital, where she turned out to have untreated paranoid schizophrenia aggrivated by extreme stress. Once she was medicated she changed completely, was very, very regretful, and was released. She had never harmed anyone since.
There is no point in punishing the genuinely insane. They didn't intend to do anything wrong. They will often, if treatable, never harm anyone again. Severe mental illness is extruciating, a horror in its own right. This is something I have seen personally . . . its awful. If they are not treatable, they need to be confined, but that's for everyone's safety, not to punish them. We don't generally unpunish people for accidents (overcriminalization aside) and we don't punish people who do not understand what they were doing, or thought they were doing something entirely different (shooting the Devil vs. shooting your aunt).
Not all women who kill their children are legally insane, and many of them do NOT walk. Caylee's mom hasn't got a real chance at an insanity plea. Some men who kill their children are found insane, many aren't. Some people fake insanity (its hard) and regret it when they spend the rest of thier lives in an insitution for the criminally insane. Some people who are unquestionably deeply, deeply distrubed, and very likely insane end up in prision, without medical treatment, because of the attitude I'm seeing here. They are punished for a crime they didn't understand, or for caving under unimaginable stress and confusion. The law, for thousands of years, has excused the mad, and modern cynicism should not put an end to this humane tradition.
Merely being mentally ill is not legal insanity. Though the definition varies from state to state, basically, you have to either 1) Not realize what you are doing, 2) Think you are doing something other than you are, 3) Be totally unable to control yourself, and often 4) all of the above. Bascially, you have to have a reality problem (my aunt is the Devil, my children are going to Hell unless I kill them now, my husband is actually an alien and eating my soul). In some states, being so completely distressed and out of control that you can't stop yourself counts, but that's fairly rare.
Caylee's mom maybe ill, but she is not delusional. She may be a pyschopath, and a pathological liar, but she's not psychotic. She maybe depressed, but she is not so depressed that she is having a psychotic break. No insanity plea for her.
that is so SO sad
