Musings on Texas v. Yates

Texas Penal Code 8.01.

INSANITY. (a) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that, at the time of the conduct charged, the actor, as a result of severe mental disease or defect, did not know that his conduct was wrong.
(b) The term "mental disease or defect" does not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.

It is something of a relief to check the Penal Code and find that the law is not quite as stupid as the talking heads have made it out to be.

Obviously here in Houston the Andrea Yates verdict has dominated the airways; and I have repeatedly heard that Texas law states that a person is innocent by reason of insanity "if she didn't know that what she was doing was wrong when she did it." If that were really the law then you would have a monumentally stupid law, since no Muslim fanatic could ever be convicted of murder under that rule. But the law has the sense to stipulate that the perp's ignorance has to spring from "severe mental disease or defect," which in Yates's case would certainly seem to apply.

Still, I think it's a bad law, and here's why: I think the mental illness should be a factor taken into consideration in sentencing. But there is something fundamentally perverse about saying that because Yates thought she was doing her kids a favor by killing them, she is innocent of murder.

You see, in my view, the question of whether Yates was guilty of murder comes down to this: did she kill her children, knowing that she was killing her children and intending to do so? If so, then she is guilty of murder, and our court system should say so. If you want to give her a lighter sentence, or make her eligible for parole ahead of schedule based on successful treatment, I think that's arguable. But I think it is wrong and societally destructive to say that she is not guilty of murder. I believe that 8.01a should be amended so that it reads something more like this (remember I'm not a lawyer so it might have to be rephrased for technical purposes):

INSANITY. (a) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that, at the time of the conduct charged, the actor, as a result of severe mental disease or defect, did not understand the nature of his action.

Thus, for example, if Andrea Yates had been hallucinating, and had thought that her children were possessed by demons that were trying to kill her, and she had killed the demon children in self-defense, then that would, I think, constitute a legitimate claim that she was not guilty of murder, it not being murder to kill someone whom you honestly believe is trying to kill you. But Yates knew perfectly well that she was killing her children, and that is exactly what she meant to do; and furthermore her own 9-1-1 call makes it quite clear that she knew that what she was doing would be considered murder by the law. She just felt that it was in her children's best interest to be murdered. I think it perfectly reasonable to say, "She was insane, and that is why she murdered her children, and therefore we should not give her the same punishment we give cold-blooded killers who murder their wives for the insurance money." But I think it is deeply wrong to say, "She was insane, and therefore she isn't really a murderer at all." She is a murderer, even though her insanity is what convinced her that her children would be better off dead and therefore led her to choose to become a murderer.

Thus 8.01a is, it seems to me, a deeply flawed law in need of amendment.

But it could be worse. According to Sally Satel, "England, Canada and Australia, for example, have special infanticide statutes that rule out murder charges against new mothers and typically impose sentences of probation and counseling. The maximum charge the woman can face is manslaughter."

If you want insanity, I put it to you that those laws, if they exist, are absolutely insane.

Furthermore, in the guise of being sensitive to women, they are deeply insulting to women: they say, in effect, "Women who have just had kids are so naturally psychopathic that you have to give them a pass on murder for a year or so." Hey, men have been making jokes about how women go temporarily insane every month for as long as there have been men and women, and the last bulletin I got from the Princeton Women's Center said that making jokes like that was tantamount to giving any man in hearing distance permission to commit rape. (Though since I haven't been on the PWC's mailing list for two decades one hopes that bulletin has been superceded in the interim.) Hm, looks suspiciously like whether or not referring to women-under-the-influence-of-hormones as crazy is good or bad on a case-by-case basis -- namely, are you trying to get a man into prison, or are you trying to keep a woman out?

Which leads to another question that troubles me deeply. Is there anyone who would want to bet any money -- much less his own life -- that if it had been the children's father, rather than the children's mother, who committed this crime, the jury would not have convicted him?

A couple of other random points:

One of Yates's acquaintances, whose children used to play with the murdered Yates children, called into a Houston talk show today. This acquaintance -- who was delighted with the acquittal -- proceeded to express the following opinions, one following about sixty seconds behind the other:

1. The verdict was the right one, because Yates was wrong in the head and you ought not punish a person for something they do because they're wrong in the head.

Now in another case from this week in Houston, a man killed his two children and then committed suicide, after being denied custody in the divorce. So the host asked the caller, as a follow-up, whether the caller would have been willing to grant the same benefit of the doubt to that murderously disturbed gentleman had he survived his suicide attempt. To which the caller replied:

2. Sure, because nobody would kill his own children unless he was wrong in the head.

Is it just me, or is the inescapable conclusion here that nobody should ever be found guilty of murdering his or her own children? If you're guilty, that makes you crazy, which makes you innocent -- is that not the result to which we are unavoidably driven? And I would add that in context, the caller certainly seemed ready to pronounce the guy innocent-because-crazy based on no information other than what I've just given you, namely that he had killed his own children. So I don't think it's a matter of a logical conclusion that the intellectual slob hadn't got around to thinking out but would have rejected -- I think this caller would actually pretty much go right along with that conclusion. It sounded, in fact, like that's exactly what the guy was arguing for.

And that is insane.

Finally, I would agree with Mark Steyn (I don't have the link, unfortunately, because I read this essay a while back) that the whole it-could-have-been-any-of-us-modern-American-women-because-our-lives-suck-so-much attitude best exemplified in Anna Quindlen's disgraceful Newsweek piece about "Every Mother's Struggle," pretty much demands the sort of slapdown response you would give a spoiled rich kid sitting in his Gothic clothes smoking his clove cigarettes in the coffee house and talking about how much life sucks. Yeah, Anna, two things.

1. You think it sucks being a modern American woman? Try being an ordinary, happily married American woman in the 1890's, before microwaves and washing machines and electric stoves. You whiny little brat, you wouldn't last fifteen minutes under the sheer physical demands those women faced -- and yet a whole bunch of them managed to be a whole lot more cheerful and happy than you, and most of them would have found it unthinkable to murder their own children. What does that say about your strength of character compared to theirs? In fact, the vast majority of women in the world right now this very instant have lives that are immeasurably more difficult than yours in every imaginable respect, and yet they contrive to be cheerful and optimistic. You whiny spoiled brat, you.

2. You do not, in fact, have a clue of the mental hell Andrea Yates went through. You do not, in fact, "know how she felt." That would be because while personal inconvenience, not getting enough sleep because of changing diapers, postpartum "depression" and having to deal with people who are annoying selfish and constantly consult their own convenience instead of yours -- which is indeed the experience of practically every mother of a newborn -- are indeed a pain in the butt, those things are not the same damn thing as severe mental illness, you self-obsessed, whiny little twit. But women like you who run around trying to make out like the two are the same kind of thing and like the difference is only a matter of degree, are precisely the reason that the UK and Canada and Australia have declared that their citizens are not even allowed, legally, to entertain the notion that a woman might have actually just flat decided to murder her kid 'cause she's, um, a murderer.

Meanwhile, on a simply personal level, the attempt to hijack the horror that any sane and compassionate person must feel in contemplating what depth of mental torture would drive a mother to do what Andrea Yates did -- the attempt to hijack that horror in order to get people to feel sorry for you because you bear the All But Intolerable Burden Of Being The Much Put-Upon Anna Quindlen, is contemptible beyond words.

I'd better stop here before I forget myself and say how I really feel, on this meant-to-be-reasonably-family-friendly blog.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn, to mark the occasion of Yates's beating the rap, has reposted the article I was thinking of. His and my reactions are even more in line than I remembered; though I can't be sure he would agree with my willingness to let Yates's sentencing be adjusted to reflect her mental state.

UPDATE: Mona Charen wishes, along with the jury, that Texas would allow a verdict of "guilty but insane," which seems to me to be an excellent suggestion indeed. Gets my emphatic vote. (HT: K-Lo.)