Andrea Yates found GUILTY of murder!

I agree, Sting. It just reaffirms my lack of faith in people.

 

Good discussion, just different perspectives, I think.

 

Treecave, your accusation is wrong. I am just as outraged over any man who murders his family, or anyone else. Please don't make assumptions about me like that.

EDIT: And the reason the bias is reflected in the media is because the attention people give to the story. They wouldn't be hyping it if people weren't buying it.

 

Treecave
"Americans are huge hypocrites. Our double standard that favors men is yet another example of it."

Well, here's a little perspective on that. Maybe this will go towards your "lack of faith in people".

A few questions:

The ACLU, NOW, and other civil rights activists and organizations, speak loud and clear in defense of the oppressed. Why is it, then, that they don?t step up to the plate to defend men wrongly accused of rape? Divorced men who are denied child visitation rights without just cause? Men whose female partners abort their unborn children without their consent? Why is that, I wonder?

Why is it, that in the age of equal rights, 18-year-old men are required to register for the draft, but women are not?

We hear a lot about advances in breast cancer care and research. News programs focus on the issue all the time, making recommendations to women, and expressing the need for more funding in this area. When is the last time you saw such a story about prostate cancer? Is that not as important? Men have a significantly lower life-expectancy than women. Is there any research being done to determine why? I wonder what attention that issue would get if women were the ones with the shorter life expectancy.

Three years ago, CBS News did a story about falsely accused deadbeat dads in Los Angeles. These people were wrongly accused through mistaken identity, and they proved with DNA tests that they were not the fathers. Some were accused, not by the mothers, but by the city of Los Angeles simply because their name happened to match the name of a legitimate deadbeat dad. Yet they were forced to pay child support, because they didn?t have the resources to prove their innocence within 30 days of the accusation. That?s the law. Did any civil rights groups step up for these wrongly accused men? Nope. Imagine NOW and the ACLU if a story broke about women forced to pay child care for children that weren?t theirs.

Well, certainly there is blatant sexism against women in the workplace. To help resolve that, NOW recently tried to claim a portion of the 9/11 charity proceeds to research the reasons why women are underrepresented in the fields of law enforcement and fire fighting. Even putting aside the extreme inappropriateness of this request (actually, demand, because they threatened the city of New York with a lawsuit), I have a question: Are they research other fields where women are statistically underrepresented, such as garbage collection, coal mining, and ditch digging?

You know what?s funny? According to network television, and the women who watch it, crude jokes about men are. NBC?s Katie Couric once asked a jilted bride if she ?considered castration an option?? ABC?s Meredith Vieira asked baseball player Mike Piazza ?who has the biggest wood on the team?? and ?Who?s your favorite player to pat on the behind?? Harmless fun, perhaps? Well, imagine NOW?s reaction to a male reporter making similar inquires about women and their body parts. Ah, I?m sure they?d have a sense of humor about it.

Man, it sure feels good to be a? man.

 

I can't believe, with comments like that, that I'm going to get the last word on this.

 

Hey listen, I just found this out from one of my friends.

Andrea Yate's minister was the one who told her to kill her kids! He told her that they were going to go to hell because they were sinner's. (Also she's mentally unstable if you ask me!)

Andrea Yates's minister was on The Early Show, and as quoted from my friend- he told the guy who interviewed him,

"We're all goin to hell! I'm goin to hell, Even YOU'RE goin to hell! Everyone's goin to hell!"
The guy got really mad!(who wouldn't?)

But the strange thin was- he was wearing a shirt from his church, that said something like- 'God Is Alive' or SOMETHING!

 

Fierce, I don't need the last word because I know I'm right. Winning an argument against someone who can't comprehend the difference between psychotic compulsion and normal healthy desires would not give me anymore pleasure than, say, Tiger Woods would feel upon beating me at a round of miniature golf.

 

"The ACLU, NOW, and other civil rights activists and organizations, speak loud and clear in defense of the oppressed. Why is it, then, that they don?t step up to the plate to defend men wrongly accused of rape? Divorced men who are denied child visitation rights without just cause? Men whose female partners abort their unborn children without their consent? Why is that, I wonder?"

The ACLU is EVIL!!!! That is why .

 

"someone who can't comprehend the difference between psychotic compulsion and normal healthy desires."

I'm not sure why you think that of me. Did I say something in that regard? More likely I said something about responsibility for one's actions, not about similarities between psychotic compulsion and healthy desires. ? And besides, the argument I was referring to was the one about male/female double standards.

 

I've explained it over and over, yet you still just don't get it, Fierce. I'm not saying that to be rude, I'm just explaining why I'm so tired of trying to put this across. I will attempt one more time.

You have said more than once in the same breath that she's obviously insane, but that fact does not "excuse" her actions. This sort of statement in itself indicates a lack of understanding of what's going on, and the reason why is not complicated: people only seek to offer excuses for actions they've wantonly committed without regard to problems they may cause. Yates wasn't doing what she wanted - no one has suggested she had any desire to kill or even just be rid of her kids. She was doing something she was compelled to do.

It's not like it seems from Hollywood - if you've seen the Manchurian Candidate, where the heavily brainwashed guy in the end manages to kill himself rather than fulfill his "programmed" goal. Real psychosis doesn't work that way. And despite your assurance that you are not a candidate for ever experiencing a psychotic episode, I have to remind you that I am not a candidate for one either - but I did experience one, thanks to a bad reaction to a medication.

Your arguments consistently require Yates to have some hidden desire to get rid of her kids in order to make sense. Otherwise, talking about an "excuse" for her actions (or lack thereof) simply wouldn't apply.

This is the last I have to say on it. Have your last word and enjoy it.

 

"You have said more than once in the same breath that she's obviously insane, but that fact does not "excuse" her actions."

That's correct. The insanity defense holds no water with me. This didn't happen overnight. She had knowledge of her condition for years. She was informed that it was instigated by postpartum depression. She ignored recommendations to stop having children. She was not taking medication. She allowed herself to be unsupervised with her children despite her condition (and before the sexism charge is thrown out, I hold Mr. Yates culpable too). There is evidence she had been planning this. She drowned her children, one by one, chasing them as they screamed running through the house. She "snapped out of it" just after all five were drowned.

You see, anyone guilty of a murderous outburst can claim insanity, and have a point. It seems like you're saying that just because her brain misfired, she's absolved. You don't think a person's brain can misfire when they become infuriated, maybe at the sight of a cheating spouse, or something similar? Would murder in that be excusable, too? I would sure hope not. But in fact, one could possibly make a better defense for the infuriated person, because at least that person may not have had prior knowledge that he/she might be capable of such a thing.

"Yates wasn't doing what she wanted - no one has suggested she had any desire to kill or even just be rid of her kids. She was doing something she was compelled to do. "

This is a complete and total rationalization. A woman engulfed in rage at her cheating husband could use the exact same excuse. Would you say this excuse applies to a man engulfed in rage at his cheating wife?

"And despite your assurance that you are not a candidate for ever experiencing a psychotic episode, I have to remind you that I am not a candidate for one either - but I did experience one, thanks to a bad reaction to a medication."

Let me ask you, was there any indication that the medication you took would cause a psychotic episode? Do you have any history of posing a danger to others? Did you have any logical reason to assume you might become dangerous upon taking the medication? And if so, did you knowingly put yourself in a position where you posed a danger to children, or anyone? Did you kill anyone? I find the comparison to Yates completely invalid. You had zero history of being unstable or a danger, and there was no reason to believe the medication would make you dangerous. If anything had happened during your episode, and it was proven you were under the influence of the drugs and had no prior history, you would have a valid defense in my mind. You honestly compare that to Yates' situation?

Just a question to help me understand your position - would you feel differently if she killed someone else's five children? To me, that makes no difference. Society cannot allow these things to happen. I for one am glad we're setting a precedent that murder will not be tolerated, and if you are not capable of controlling yourself, be it from illness, temper, or whatever, you damn well better remove yourself from situations where you might lose control, or face the consequences if you do.

 

Oh, just say it.

 

A woman engulfed in rage at her cheating husband could use the exact same excuse. Would you say this excuse applies to a man engulfed in rage at his cheating wife?

This is why I don't think you understand mental illness. These are not examples of psychotic compulsion - these examples you gave are classified as "crimes of passion" in law, and usually warrant only second degree murder charges.

In a nutshell, the way to tell psychotic compulsion from a "crime of passion" is that absolutely anyone can relate to the feelings of someone who commits a crime of passion. Saw spouse in bed with someone else, got mad. That's easy to follow. "Sending the kids on to Jesus while they're still innocent of sins that would condemn them to hell" - that's, clearly, more difficult rationale to follow, and is more typical of mental illness.

You may find this repugnant, but I'm not as upset by murders as most people are. Violence is natural to all animals - killing is a form of culling, survival of the fittest. If you don't like this, then you don't like human nature. No, I'm not saying we can't alter human nature, use our intelligence to better ourselves. That would be lovely - unfortunately, we've had many thousands of years to do that, and it ain't happened yet, so I'm not holding my breath. People kill each other for retarded reasons. That's a fact of life that has not changed in thousands of years despite everything we've done to stop it. The bottom line is that nothing you do to killers will bring back those they've killed.

And it's really sad when it comes down to a point like this, but I wonder if the Yates kids aren't better off dead than they would have been in the care of two idiots like the Yates couple. Every day, kids are tortured into becoming hideous adults who need 20 years of therapy (or some equivalent) just to achieve normalcy, and THAT is where the preventative stance you and I both claim to favor should be exercised. Nothing that is done to Yates will save even one child from being raised by insane people with nutty religious beliefs that cause them to, for example, keep right on having kids when the doctors have told them not to.

 

I don't like the insinuation that a woman could only commit a crime like this if she was insane. It seems kind of sexist to me. Like, "women are pink fluffy butterflies made of sugar and spice and everything nice...blah blah blah". If I was a woman, it would offend me, just because it's so stereotypical and 19th century. "We musn't send ladies to war; they would faint! etc. etc." Women are human beings, and just as capable of evil as men. Stop thinking otherwise.

This is a sad and horrible case, but I don't know enough about it to say whether the insanity defense was legitimate or not; all I'm saying is, don't assume that it is legitimate, just because she's a woman.

 

Treecave
"This is why I don't think you understand mental illness. These are not examples of psychotic compulsion - these examples you gave are classified as "crimes of passion" in law, and usually warrant only second degree murder charges. "

But see, I think the whole "crime of passion" thing is total bunk, too.


"You may find this repugnant, but I'm not as upset by murders as most people are."

Yup, and I guess this is the crux of our disagreement, here and on a lot of other issues. I believe (and please do correct me if I'm wrong) you recently argued in favor of abortion rights by saying something along the lines of not valuing life as much as some other people. I believe you also basically find favor with an anarchist society. I think life is the most precious thing we have, and I can't follow such extreme beliefs that completely cheapen it.


"Violence is natural to all animals - killing is a form of culling, survival of the fittest. If you don't like this, then you don't like human nature."

But, as you go on to allude to, the difference is that humans have to ability to override their instincts. For the betterment of society, we have the right to demand that humans exercise this ability (I know you'll say Yates didn't have that ability, but we've gone over that enough times). The fact that there will always be humans who don't exercise this ability is nowhere near enough reason to justify allowing it to happen.


"The bottom line is that nothing you do to killers will bring back those they've killed."

But, by establishing that certain behavior will not be tolerated, we try to save future lives.


"I wonder if the Yates kids aren't better off dead than they would have been in the care of two idiots like the Yates couple."

Again, we just have a major philosophical disagreement here. I think that's a horrible way to look at it. The kids should have been removed from the family, and perhaps they would have found happiness in an adoptive family. To just give up on them as being hopeless and in need of endless therapy is way too pessimistic for me. I can't just give up entire lifetimes because they had a bad start.

 

But see, I think the whole "crime of passion" thing is total bunk, too.

Well, that's just a baseless statement, not an argument. I'm not a big fan of it, either, but you're not really saying anything here, so I'll just let it slide.

I believe (and please do correct me if I'm wrong) you recently argued in favor of abortion rights by saying something along the lines of not valuing life as much as some other people. I believe you also basically find favor with an anarchist society. I think life is the most precious thing we have, and I can't follow such extreme beliefs that completely cheapen it.

I'll take this point by point. On abortion, I have said that a life without freedom is worse than death in my opinion (and when someone who's ever actually LOST his or her freedom tells me I'm wrong, I'll reconsider), therefore to deny an obviously living person the freedom to make her own choices on the unprovable chance that you might be saving a living fetus is a bad judgment call. On anarchy, what I've said is the ideal would be no governments, but each person governing himself in accord with that "do unto others" rule that shows up in every religion from Christianity to Wicca. Ideals don't apply in daily living, I just think you have to aim for perfection to achieve half-decent results.

My beliefs don't cheapen life - in fact, I could argue that the opposing stances do. The opposing stances in both above cases call for regulation of everyone's behavior and rights. This is a repugnant stance to me, because it allows people to remain like weak-minded children, never taking responsibility for themselves. For example, if the only reason my mother had me was because the government wouldn't let her terminate the pregnancy, I wouldn't expect her to be a responsible mother.

It's also worth noting that I don't believe we only get one lifetime, and it sounds like you do. Most Americans do. The majority of humans worldwide believe in reincarnation, and therefore can't figure out what our obsession with saving every fetus is about. I don't believe in reincarnation (it would take about an hour to explain what I do believe), but suffice it to say I think that if fetuses have souls from conception on, those souls will get other chances to live if the fetus is miscarried or aborted. Then again, I also believe that if abortion IS murder, everyone who commits it (including the fathers!) will someday, somehow meet a much better justice than we humans could possibly assign them. It puzzles me why Christians prefer manmade justice to God's justice, but this is way to view their usual stance of "pro-life" and "pro-death penalty" as consistent.

The fact that there will always be humans who don't exercise this ability is nowhere near enough reason to justify allowing it to happen.

Fine and dandy, but you're talking prevention here. In Yates' case, we already "allowed" it to happen. Killing her now doesn't fix the problem (nor will it discourage psychos from doing similar things, because by definition they don't have the rationality to see the connection between her act and theirs). Putting her in jail for life doesn't help either - that's just a lot of free meals and a place to live that I'm buying her. What would solve the problem here, IMO, is sterilizing her. And her hubby - mark my words, he will start another family and something similar to this will happen. He's as nutty as she is, continuing to have children with someone he should have realized wasn't capable of being a fit parent. That's like letting an axe-murderer babysit for you.

The kids should have been removed from the family, and perhaps they would have found happiness in an adoptive family.

That's an ideal. It almost never happens. You're talking about a society which is still gradually waking up to the idea that children aren't the property of their biological parents. Less than 50 years ago, we maintained it was okay for parents to discipline their kids however they saw fit (and deaths that resulted w

 

Treecave
What I mean by "the whole crime of passion thing is total bunk" is that I don't accept passion, "uncontrollable" or otherwise, as an excuse to commit a brutal crime. Same for being under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or any other kind of excuse people come up with. Call me tough, but I say if you do the deed, you take the consequences.

I'm glad you clarified your positions on those other items. I wouldn't want to leave them with just my assumptions. On reincarnation: I don't have any kind of solitary belief about the afterlife. And that's kind of the point; none of us really know. We can all have our own beliefs, but we can only legislate based on what we know. I do see to some extent the hypocrisy you point out about religious groups who believe in a higher justice, but at the same time are big on dishing out justice in this lifetime. But to me, I separate justice on this earth from any religious notions.

You make a good point about fathers being responsible for abortions as well. It's so often looked at as a woman's "crime", but any male partner who goes along with it is equally guilty, no doubt. It's not often talked about, but a lot of men get an easy out and let women take the heat.

On Yates, preventing future crimes of hers isn't enough, IMO. There has to be punishment for actions. It's like telling the Enron execs they can walk free as long as they don't become heads of major corporations again. It's not a matter of vengeance, it's a matter of preventing a lapse into an overly-permissive society.

I'm sure you're right on in what you say about Mr. Yates, and it's pathetic.

I understand that the odds were against the kids even if they were taken from the home. But at least it would give them a chance. Even a 1 in 100 chance is better than none. But that's where we disagree fundamentally I suppose, because you look at the 99 out of 100 chance that they would suffer.

Your comments about judges - we have a lot of morons as judges these days, no doubt about it.

 

Call me tough, but I say if you do the deed, you take the consequences.

So it doesn't matter what the reason was, or if there was anything that might make it understandable? No grey area at all?

 

Well, give me an example of a grey area. (And don't use Yates, please! There's already 12 pages on it.)

 

None come to mind, but I feel there must always be room to look deeper into things and see that perhaps something may have caused it that makes it different than murder.

 

That's what judges and juries are for. If an example comes to mind, please post it.

 

Also interesting to note, Marilyn Lemak was also sentenced to life in prison today for murdering her kids.

Chicago Tribune

She lives in Naperville, a Chicago suburb. She murdered her three children in 1999 by drugging and smothering them, after she and her husband separated. Apparently, she was trying to spare them the horror of knowing their father abandoned them, and claimed she was delusional when she did it. She did not have the history of mental illness Yates had.

 

What I mean by "the whole crime of passion thing is total bunk" is that I don't accept passion, "uncontrollable" or otherwise, as an excuse to commit a brutal crime.

I think I agree with this (because we're talking about normally rational people "snapping", as opposed to someone with a history of mental illness, and I tend to think normally rational people should not snap to the extent of committing murder). At least, I can't think of any obvious exceptions right now.

But that's where we disagree fundamentally I suppose, because you look at the 99 out of 100 chance that they would suffer.

Yeah, it's a pessimistic view, and I understand your take on it, but unfortunately I've got a view even more cold and scientific than my previous one: where do the psychos and criminals in jail right now come from? There's no one answer, but a lot of them do come from very messed up home environments. Crime in this country just isn't going to change drastically until we can reduce the level of unfit parents spawning kids who have very little chance of growing up healthy. That's my guess, anyway. I am very nervous about saying we should interfere very much in who's allowed to have/raise kids, but I think it comes down to two options. (1) Accept that natural selection seems unable to weed out horribly unfit parents, and accept that really messed up individuals will always be part of human society whether we like it or not, punish them or not, do anything to stop it or not, or (2) Start deciding who can have kids, who can raise kids, and.... well, basically interfere in people's lives in a way that makes me very uncomfortable. Either way, I think you're choosing "the better of two evils" unfortunately. But many choices are like that.

Re: punishing people. I just don't see what good punishing people does. You brought up Enron. Back in the early 80's, there was a man (Jake Butcher) in TN who ran a bank into the ground. He embezzled $77 million, got caught, went to a country club jail in FL for a few years, got out and kept the money. Tons of Tennesseans lost their life savings in the bank failure, and the FDIC insurance was not as helpful then as it is now (this debacle was one of the ones that spurred some changes in the FDIC). The only fit punishment for that guy, IMO, is for him to wind up a destitute pan handler for the rest of his life, and I don't think that's a punishment our justice system can mete out. So what good does punishing him do? None. A more feasible alternative would be to somehow put him to work for the TN for the rest of his natural life until he's paid back all the people he stole from.

So, leaving the world of white collar crime and moving onto murder.... what good does punishment do? It doesn't bring back the dead. And I don't buy the argument that it's a deterrent - that it causes other would-be killers to refrain from killing. Hell, Yates knew she lived in a state that puts innocent people to death - everybody knows TX loves to fry anybody they can get their little mitts on - and the fear of death penalty didn't penetrate her delusions long enough to stop her from killing her kids. As long as people in TX continue to kill people, when even Mexico refuses to extradite people to TX because of its bizarrely kill-happy stance, I will remain unconvinced that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. And if the death penalty doesn't deter crime, then how much can jail scare anybody?

So you are seeing a value in punishment that I don't see, and that's the big difference in our views on that.

Re: Knight's point about grey areas. How about battered woman syndrome (which I think could apply to battered men, too, but no one wants to admit that goes on, so there's not much evidence or studies on it)? Where the woman does not try to kill a man while he's beating her, but waits for a time she can plan out how to kill him in apparently cold blood. I'm sure a lot of simple revenge crimes try to use this defense, but I think it is a real syndrome. I mean, when someo

 

Treecave
"Where do the psychos and criminals in jail right now come from? There's no one answer, but a lot of them do come from very messed up home environments."

Well I'm in agreement here, the only reason I seemed to argue on the other side was because I think innocent kids deserve a chance to beat those odds, as opposed to being killed. Ironically, I brought up this same issue a few months ago in another thread, citing statistics about kids from broken homes being linked with crime, suicides, early pregnancy, etc., and
I got my rear handed to me by people using the "stay out of my backyard" argument. Go figure ?

I understand what you mean about choosing the lesser of two evils among the options you provided. And we do have to go with option 1 I believe, but it's depressing.

Re: Jake Butcher. Well, if his punishment was a few years in a cushy prison, that wasn't much of a punishment, was it? Leniency of the law is something I'm against (as you've noticed!). The problem with this case is the lack of punishment. I too wish for better forms of punishment
where he would make retribution to the people he scammed, but failing that, a long tough jail term would have been fine by me.

I disagree about punishment not being a deterrent. Punishment is how society sets the boundaries for behavior. It's the whole concept of avoiding an overly-permissive
society. Do you honestly think a society without punishment wouldn't see higher numbers of crimes? The death penalty is a whole other issue - it's lost its value as a deterrent because the only time you
hear about it is for high-profile crimes, and there are typically years and years of appeals. If (and I'm not saying I
condone this) the death penalty was swift and common among all violent crimes, I
think it would become a deterrent.

In your example of a battered woman, at least there is some motive of self-defense. But at the same time, we can't have a society of vigilante justice either. This hypothetical woman needs to get the authorities involved, and I know you'll say a lot of times that doesn't do any good. But if you're talking about a psychopath/stalker/etc., that falls within the confines of the law. Also, rather than plotting the murder of her attacker, could she not "plot" a means of self-defense? You might say it would be extreme to suggest she register and buy a gun to protect herself, but don't you also think plotting a murder is just as extreme? I mean, I have absolutely no regard for the kind of scum you're talking about, but even so I can't condone preconceived murder as a solution.

Is your point about the story about the man killing his family being buried in the news that it's sexism? Don't overlook the fact that the guy shot himself, so there's no controversy over how to handle it. As disgusting as the event is, that specific case is over with as far as the need for media coverage. And refer to my previous post about sexism if that was your point.