Fetal abduction: Another gruesome murder charge

What the hell?

No, really, what the hell?

It has happened again:

A US woman has been charged with the murder of a pregnant mother whose baby was cut from her womb.

At a court in Massachusetts, Julie Corey, 35, was accused of killing her pregnant friend, cutting the baby from the womb and kidnapping it.

Darlene Haynes, who was eight months pregnant, was found dead with incisions to her abdomen in her house in July.

A search for the missing child led police to Ms Corey, who had a baby with her which DNA revealed was Haynes'.

Initially, police charged Ms Corey with kidnapping after finding her in possession of the baby girl at a homeless shelter in New Hampshire.

(BBC)​

Part of me is glad I didn't hear about this back in July. Probably the same part that wishes I hadn't seen the headline today.

Or maybe I'm blocking a memory. Maybe I smoked that brain cell.

Why?

To the one, Corey's lawyer says the woman denies any role in Haynes' murder. To the other, I still think this is the sort of thing that absolutely screams for an insanity defense.

I mean, what the freakin' hell?

I don't get it. How does any sane person calculate and perform such a crime?

And these are incompetent killers. The official cause of death for Darlene Haynes is apparently "blunt force trauma, asphyxia by ligature strangulation and incision to the abdomen".

What the hell is wrong with these people?

At any rate, by the BBC's reckoning this is the sixth such killing and seventh attempt in the U.S. in twenty-two years. Compared to everything else that goes on around here, that's a low number. Why, then, is it no comfort at all?
_____________________

Notes:

British Broadcasting Corporation. "US woman charged with murder of pregnant mother". BBC News Online. December 17, 2009. News.BBC.co.uk. December 17, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8419682.stm

See Also:

Sciforums discussion: "Amber Alert Issued for Fetus" (2004)

 

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tiassa, why would this scream insanity in a system where someone in the midle of a pscyotic break is concidered sane enough to be tried for first degree murder and executed? because aparently "the CIA made me do it" or "I had to kill the aliens" is concidered planning.

 

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Just ... you know ... because

Because it's the truth. Because we have a deplorable mental health infrastructure in the United States. Because we as a nation must reconcile ourselves to the facts and their toll. Because nobody ever sees it coming. Because our justice system seems to be more about punishment than justice. Because we need to understand the processes contributing to these crimes.

Just ... you know ... because.

It's a good thing for prosecutors I'm not going to be on the jury.

"She bludgeoned her friend. Then strangled her. Then cut a baby out of the womb and stole it." That's all the defense attorney would have to say. "Is this really a sane act?"

There are plenty of crimes that are simply malice. But this?

In youth, naîvete and romanticism might have suggested to me that someone who got away with such a theft could pull it off. But time, life, and education have demonstrated to me that the lies can only last so long. How many times would such a "mother" tell the story to her growing child? How long before she really believed whatever story she told? What neuroses would develop as a result? What symptoms would emerge? There can be no happily ever after for such a "mother".

This crime occurs in a realm worlds removed from sanity.

 

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both you and tiassa seem to have missed my point. I dont dissagree that she wasnt acting rationally (under the definition used in the mental health act for instance) but the way the legal system in the US (and you yourself have said ours is as bad and from what i have seen i dont dissagree with you on it) its more than likly the SYSTEM will say she was sane. How they can possably do that i dont know, how they can possably live with themselves for doing that i also dont know but it constantly happens. People in the middle of a schizophrenic or manic episode or so depressed because they are constantly being abused at school or in the middle of a PTSD induced flashback are routinely judged SANE when they should never even be charged at all but rather placed into the care of the mental health system. We disscussed this in another thread ages ago where i asked you "what would make you torture and kill someone?" Your responce was just because someone lacks empathy doesnt mean they arnt mentally ill. Look at martin briant, can you really say he was a mentally healthy person to go and hunt down all those people? HELL NO

What about all the parents who kill there children (mainly women), hell half of them are diognosed with PND and they are STILL found guilty of murder or manslaughter. Is that right????? we should be getting them treatment not a jail cell but the system wont even recognise someone with paranoid delusions as being "insane" so why would it say this was?

 

There is more at stake than just this defendant

I wouldn't say an insanity defense will actually work. But—

—while I don't disagree with such a statement of the problem, we have to start somewhere. We can, to a certain—metaphorical—extent, treat societies like individuals. In this case, we might say the American people need to wake up. They need to look themselves in the mirror in the context of our society's mental health. If an occasion in which insanity is clearly the truth doesn't win an insanity defense, there is a problem. And we're not going to fix the problem by never asking the question.

So with something like this, the result may be the same insofar as the defendant will be convicted and sentenced as if competent, but the experience will be seared into the memories of certain segments of the American population. All in all, it's all just bricks in the wall, right? If we intend to tear down the wall, we must at some point stand face to face with it.

Some of our most heinous crimes are preventable insofar as a better mental health infrastructure might have acknowledged and addressed some of the developing psychoses and neuroses that put people over the edge.

When, between the womb and the world, did Julie Corey become a killer? What does that moment of transformation look like? When the program irrevocably commits to that pathway, what are the relevant and applicable factors involved? I want a prosecutor to convince me that the transition is one that is psychiatrically sound.

For the crime and punishment advocates, it is better if we never ask such questions. When insanity is the truth, we need to make that stand and figure out what is real. Lawyers for the accused in this case say she had nothing to do with the murder. All I can think is, Really? You're really going to go with the I-had-nothing-to-do-with-it defense? Because they're going to lose. They are so obviously going to lose that it ought to be malpractice to drag their client through that defense. And what, really, does reinforcing that rationale do for anyone? Quite clearly, the killer, whether Julie Corey or someone else, is sick. So how does a legal team pleading an untenable defense help a mentally ill person? I mean, if you're going to take the actual defense that Ms. Corey is innocent, how, exactly, do we explain how she ended up with the missing fetus at a homeless shelter across a state line?

Just ... you know. It's the obvious question.

If I'm her lawyer, the only route is obvious: insanity. If we lose, we lose. But this time it's true. So it needs to be on the record as such. Otherwise, society gets absolutely nothing out of this except an unhealthy satisfaction of condemnation, punishment, and moral revulsion.

 

The woman had something she wanted. I don't think its mental illness. I think its callous disregard of another person's life. "I want it, I'm taking it"

Men strangle women as they are raping them.
Men kill other men over a few dollars.

 

now do you see my point tiassa?

but i do see yours, if you get a case so ovious like this one and it goes the wrong way (guilty) then there is pressure which can be put on legislators to change the law. Unfortunatly i just dont see that ever happerning in the US. Look at how hard it was to get basic health care through the congress and even then it was only passed so that private companies can keep screwing the little guy.

How many elections have you voted in where the state of mental health care has been an election issue?

 

Absurd. You take a crime so disgusting it turns your stomach and use the very depravity of the act as a reason to let the bitch escape punishment? To hell with that. Is something wrong with her? Clearly. But one could argue that something is wrong with every criminal. They still must pay for their crimes. In this case, death is clearly indicated.

 

Mad why was "not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect" put into the law?
Why is someone who is driving and has a heart atack and plows through a whole heep of school children not guilty of manslaughter?

Just because its in the mind doesnt make it any less real than if it was in the body. god sake you went through med school for fuck sake, dont you rember your mental health roatations? Dont you rember compassion and empathy?

 

compassion and empathy for someone who killed a pregnant woman for her baby?
LMAO!
Why do you assume she was mentally ill?

 

what would you feel for someone who had a heart atack and killed a group of school children? would you blame them for that or would you blame the disease?

Oh and why would you POSSABLY assume shes NOT mentally ill?

 

Purposely killing someone to get something from them isn't even close to dying and causing an accident.

And again, why do you assume she was mentally ill?

 

what would make YOU do that?

 

I asked first. Or are you answering my question with a question?

 

fine you want an answer, bells post sumes it up best:

now what makes YOU think she wasnt insane?

 

Because people kill people all the time to get what they want. What she did was sad and revolting, but not insane. If she sat there and rolled in the blood and then offered up the baby to the God's of Atlantis while wearing a tin foil hat, well then yeah, she probably is. If she walked up to a mom at a playground, killed her and then took her baby out of a stroller would that mean she was mentally ill?

Are women who go and get abortions, who pay someone to remove a fetus from their own bodies mentally ill? Are the doctors who do it mentally ill?

 

so tiassa, your comment now?

 

so Asguard, your comment now?

 

my comment is that you proved my initial point, no matter her mental state insanity has been reduced to the point where it can only be used as a delibate defense by people who certainly ARE sane (for instance women who kill there husbands then scream domestic abuse because he had refused vaginal sex while she was on her period, a real case)