And what do you think the penalty should be for a woman who killed two young people with malice aforethought?
When did she not know what she was doing?
When she bought the gun? When she fired the first bullet into the windshield of her car? The second into her son? The third?
http://tbo.com/news/crime/schenecker-describes-shooting-her-kids-in-recorded-statement-20140507/
Did she not know what she was doing when she staged her daughter's corpse to appear to be smiling?
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1405/14/ng.01.html
And what stopped her from shooting herself as she claimed she intended to do?
http://tbo.com/news/crime/schenecker-describes-shooting-her-kids-in-recorded-statement-20140507/
When a person is a danger to her/himself or to others, what should be done?
Does everyone else have to lose their home, their friends, their futures and their lives to make her feel better?
Scheneker's two children did not lose their lives.
Their lives were stolen from them and thrown away like so much garbage by Scheneker.
What do you see as justice for them in all this?
This case is so sad.[/QUOTE]
bbm that's the bottom line
There is so much wiggle room here in this case, like you pointed out there was a preponderance of evidence pointing to planning.....yet her ramblings in both her journal and in her final speech indicate that planning was done by someone who appeared very unwell.
The DT did present very 'dry' evidence and I do believe that if JS had spoken we would have had a better idea of her mental state.
The true tragedy here of course is the murder of two lovely young teens who did not deserve to be killed by their very ill mother and the truth is that she should have not been untreated for so long when she represented such a threat. I do believe that she was grossly underestimated by those closest to her including her therapy team. It's not a fault of others it is just so sad that her danger to others was so grossly underestimated.
There is absolutely no excuse for her killing her children ..... I agree.
I do believe that there are many who deservedly are feeling that they should have/could have been more proactive in her therapeutic care.
Incidentally I do wholeheartedly believe in the Crazy Like a Fox aspect too. I have even seen brilliance in planning by dementia patients.......amazing how ''mentally disabled''/ill people can outwit so called healthy able folks. It's frustrating because we know JS to have been brilliant in the past.....but her star is fading and she used her power for evil in this case. The concern for all of us is could she do this again? Needless to say she needs to be locked up because of her instability and potential threat to the public as well as her crimes.
Here's the rub: did she commit the crimes because she was mentally ill ? -- I think we can all agree that there is a huge amount of that....the vengeance factor --- absolutely. This becomes such a chicken and egg argument for sure.
A healthy person would have handled the frustration so differently. She wasn't healthy.