Because she wantonly deprived a woman of her life, and stole the child who will never know her mother. I am generally not in favor of the death penalty either, but in certain cases, such as this one, it is warranted.
It's not until her appeals hearing that it they discuss her mental illness.
Being Crazy should be no defense to being put to death because you are a predator.. If anything---it should only make the case stronger that you have to be put down because violent crazies don't stop being crazy.
Being crazy doesn't make you a predator.
They've Gone Far, Too Far'
In California, for example, the number of patients in state mental hospitals reached a peak of 37,500 in 1959 when Edmund G. Brown was Governor, fell to 22,000 when Ronald Reagan attained that office in 1967, and continued to decline under his administration and that of his successor, Edmund G. Brown Jr. The senior Mr. Brown now expresses regret about the way the policy started and ultimately evolved. ''They've gone far, too far, in letting people out,'' he said in an interview.
Dr. Robert H. Felix, who was then director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a major figure in the shift to community centers, says now on reflection: ''Many of those patients who left the state hospitals never should have done so. We psychiatrists saw too much of the old snake pit, saw too many people who shouldn't have been there and we overreacted. The result is not what we intended, and perhaps we didn't ask the questions that should have been asked when developing a new concept, but psychiatrists are human, too, and we tried our damnedest.''
Dr. John A. Talbott, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said, ''The psychiatrists involved in the policy making at that time certainly oversold community treatment, and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.'' He said the policies ''were based partly on wishful thinking, partly on the enormousness of the problem and the lack of a silver bullet to resolve it, then as now.''
Charles Schlaifer, a New York advertising executive who served as secretary-treasurer of the group, said he was now disgusted with the advice presented by leading psychiatrists of that day. ''Tranquilizers became the panacea for the mentally ill,'' he said. ''The state programs were buying them by the carload, sending the drugged patients back to the community and the psychiatrists never tried to stop this. Local mental health centers were going to be the greatest thing going, but no one wanted to think it through.''
Dr. Bertram S. Brown, a psychiatrist and Federal official who was instrumental in shaping the community center legislation in 1963, agreed that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were to some extent misled by the mental health community and Government bureaucrats.
www.nytimes.com
I didn't want to take out too much from the article but some might hit a paywall. It is a lengthy article and I don't think I have crossed a line. If I have, somebody will break out the red pen here shortly. So read it really damn quick, folks.
It was out in the open and discussed by 1984 and yet nothing has been done. Nothing. In fact, these people often don't get treatment until they go to jail. Most cannot afford the medication before and there is always the issue of those that refuse the medication. Further, some need to go through several medications until they get the right cocktail. For those that are released they go back to not affording the medication.
In order to keep these people off of death row they need to bring back the state hospitals and the good people of name your state have to be willing to accept that a significant amount of change will be directed there.
www.ibtimes.sg
