2006-07-26 07:24:26 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Law & Ethics
The laws are fine. It is peoples perceptions that need to change. Since we work under the "jury of your peers" principle, we all need to understand that when people are crazy enough to commit crimes like Andrea Yates did, they are completely deservant of the harshest punishments available. However, due to our increasingly "lenient" and manic-centric media, people are taught that Yates is just "disturbed" and in need of "mental health care" rather than "crazy" and in need of "death". People like Yates cannot be rehabilitated and I sure as hell don't want to live next door to this sick, insane, and MURDEROUS woman.
2006-07-26 07:35:17 · answer #1 · answered by Goose&Tonic 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I hope the laws never change in that direction. People like Andrea Yates are mentally ill. It does not change their culpability, but it does mitigate it. As I said in an earlier Answer, send her to a hopital for the criminally insane and treat the insanity. If she ever gets better, and understands the magnitude of her crime, she'll probably kill herself.
The death penalty is a politically loaded issue, and I have mixed feelings on it e.g. pest control v rehabilitation. but I can say with some certainty that I do not support execution of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient.
2006-07-26 15:07:25 · answer #2 · answered by Caffiend 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The laws don't need to change. Men who murder children already get tough sentences, if not the death penalty. Plus, they are condemned as monsters by the media and society.
The justice system was lenient and made excuses for Andrea Yates because she is a woman. The media played right along.
2006-07-26 14:31:06 · answer #3 · answered by shrek86ca 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hopefully never.
In my opinion, the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict is the correct verdict. Andrea Yates has had a long history of psychosis and other mental problems. It's not as if she just suddenly "snapped" one day and decided to kill her children.
Now that this verdict is in, hopefully she can get the help she should have gotten all along. It's a tragedy that it took the deaths of those 5 innocent lives in order for her to get correct medical treatment.
I think Rusty Yates should be prosecuted for child endangerment since he left his children alone with a woman who obviously was unable to care for them. He's more guilty than Andrea.
2006-07-27 10:53:21 · answer #4 · answered by Mama Pastafarian 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They shouldn't change. If they do, you have to change the laws about drafting wills too. It is a long settled legal principle that you have to understand what you are doing. To distribute property with a will, the deceased must have understood what they had to distribute and to whom they gave it.
It is the same principle. Insanity defense isn't "he's crazy so he gets off." Jeffery Dahmer would have gotten off then. She was found to not have understood what she was doing was wrong (significantly because she was convinced she was doing the right thing of saving her children from Satan).
2006-07-26 14:30:26 · answer #5 · answered by Steve 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
death penantly shes free going home to daddy tonite? how nice.Anyone with money just is not guilty anymore get used to it.
2006-07-26 15:36:03 · answer #6 · answered by mike L 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋