Yet another lunatic kills her children in an almost unthinkably
brutal manner and blames her deity. There's just no end to it, is there?

Yet another lunatic kills her children in an almost unthinkably
brutal manner and blames her deity. There's just no end to it, is there?

-----------------------------------------
08:36 PM CST on Friday, November 14, 2003

By LEE HANCOCK / The Dallas Morning News

TYLER ­ Defense lawyers for Deanna "Dee" Laney will try to convince a
Smith County jury that she was too mentally disturbed to know what she
was doing when she stoned two of her young sons to death and
severely injured a third on Mother's Day weekend.

Prosecutors also told state district Judge Cynthia Kent during a brief
pretrial hearing Friday that their psychiatric experts' assessment of
that insanity claim will be a key factor in whether they decide to seek
the death penalty against the 39-year-old housewife.

Mrs. Laney was arrested at her rural home near the Smith County
community of New Chapel Hill on May 10 after she called 911 to say she'd
stoned her sons on orders from God. Deputies found 8-year-old Joshua
Laney and 6-year-old Luke Laney lying dead in the front yard in their
pajamas and 14-month-old Aaron in his crib, bleeding from an open skull
fracture.

Mrs. Laney's husband Keith, 45, slept through the attacks and was
awakened by one of the deputies.

Investigators later said it appeared the two older boys had been
awakened one by one and led into the front yard, where their heads were
bashed in with landscaping rocks.

Mrs. Laney was indicted in August on capital murder charges. Jury
selection is scheduled to start Jan. 16, and Judge Kent has indicated
that she expects trial testimony to begin on Feb. 17.

Judge Kent told prosecutors Friday that they have until Dec. 17 to
declare whether they will seek the death penalty. If they do not, a
conviction would carry a mandatory life sentence ­ and the requirement
to serve at least 40 years before release.

But with the county's reputation for embracing the death penalty, it is
widely expected that Mrs. Laney's trial will be a capital punishment
case.

Laney at hearing

Mrs. Laney sat quietly through Friday's hearing, smiling a few times at
her lawyers but otherwise looking somber and occasionally frightened as
Judge Kent moved briskly through a stack of pretrial motions.

Wan and noticeably thin, she was dressed in a brown pantsuit. Her hair,
much grayer than in her initial court appearance in May, was carefully
curled into a flip.

Behind her, her husband sat with family members, including her sister,
her sister-in-law and a brother-in-law who is pastor of the Assembly of
God church where she has been a devout member since childhood.

Friends and acquaintances say Mr. Laney, an air compressor repairman,
has forgiven his wife and is focusing on caring for Aaron, who is still
recovering. He has said he cannot bring himself to live in the home
where his other sons died.

Mr. Laney soon faces the prospect of testifying against his wife.
Prosecution pleadings have listed Mr. Laney as one of 53 witnesses they
intend to call.

Prosecutors said during Friday's hearing that their team of mental
health experts will examine Mrs. Laney in early December and then advise
them on whether the case justifies a death penalty prosecution.

Dueling experts

Regardless, the trial is likely to hinge on psychiatric testimony and a
high-stakes duel between two of the country's most renowned forensic
psychiatric experts.

Both prosecutors and Mrs. Laney's three-lawyer defense team have
declined to discuss the case, citing a sweeping gag order.

But pretrial motions indicate that prosecutors have hired California
forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, a government consultant in criminal
cases ranging from those of would-be presidential assassin John
Hinckley, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski
to the botched 1993 government standoff with Branch Davidian leader
David Koresh.

Dr. Dietz has made his reputation as a prosecution witness challenging
insanity defenses. But he has also given expert opinions in recent
murder cases where he said defendants were too disturbed to know what
they were doing ­ including a 2002 Florida case in which a woman was
found insane after she fatally bashed her 8-month-old child against a
patio and said God had told her to do it.

His testimony as a prosecution expert in the 2002 trial of Andrea Yates
in Houston prompted a grand jury investigation.

Under defense questioning in that case, Dr. Dietz acknowledged that he
worked as a paid consultant for the TV drama Law & Order . He
then suggested that Mrs. Yates may have been inspired to drown her five
children by watching an episode of the show that depicted a mother being
found not guilty by reason of insanity after drowning her kids.

Several days after a jury rejected Ms. Yates' insanity defense and found
her guilty, Dr. Dietz acknowledged to prosecutors that no such episode
ever aired. A Harris County grand jury found in September that his
mistake was inadvertent, but Mrs. Yates' defense attorney, George
Parnham of Houston, said it was devastating and appeared deliberate.

The issue is a central part of Mrs. Yates' pending appeal of her
conviction and life sentence.

Mr. Parnham said he has offered advice and suggested experts for Mrs.
Laney's defense, and they have brought in the same forensic expert he
used in Mrs. Yates defense ­ Phillip J. Resnick of Cleveland, Ohio.

A professor of forensic psychiatry at Case Western University, Dr.
Resnick is considered an expert in murders of children by their parents.
He has faced off against Dr. Dietz in a number of cases.

Dr. Resnick's other high-profile cases range from the trials of Mr.
Dahmer and Mr. Kacynski to Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh and
Susan Smith, the North Carolina mother convicted of drowning her two
young sons by leaving them in her car and rolling it into a lake.

But even with such a prominent expert, Mrs. Laney's lawyers may have
difficulty convincing an East Texas jury to accept an insanity defense
for a defendant with no documented history of mental illness prior to
her sons' deaths.

"Just because a person is not treated for mental illness does not mean
they are not mentally ill," Mr. Parnham said.

But he added, "Now, we know from Andrea's case ­ when a person's life is
lost, it is extremely difficult for a jury to accept the very fact that
someone did not know what she was doing was wrong."

Mr. Parnham also said the state's law governing the insanity defense
poses a near insurmountable problem because it requires a jury to decide
whether a person knows that they are doing something wrong when
committing a crime, but the law offers no definition of that
self-awareness.

"We have in our Texas statute no definition on what the word know
means," he said. "Does know mean I believe what I was doing was
the right thing for my children, I believe what I was doing was the
right thing but I perceived that the police officers and the state would
perceive what I was doing was wrong? We don't know."
-----------------------------------------

Maybe she saw this spoof site and took it to heart:

http://www.geocities.com/revmfrancis/

Robert Matthews
a.a. #1801

Yet another lunatic kills her children in an almost unthinkably
brutal manner and blames her deity. There's just no end to it, is there?

-----------------------------------------
08:36 PM CST on Friday, November 14, 2003

By LEE HANCOCK / The Dallas Morning News

TYLER ­ Defense lawyers for Deanna "Dee" Laney will try to convince a
Smith County jury that she was too mentally disturbed to know what she
was doing when she stoned two of her young sons to death and
severely injured a third on Mother's Day weekend.