Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 18, 2006 23:56:42 GMT -5
Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune
The numbingly sad retrial of Andrea Yates is coming to a close in Texas this week, providing an opportunity to check in again on a similarly sad story out of Illinois.
In June 2001, Yates, then 36 and living in suburban Houston, killed her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years. She said she did it because the children weren't "righteous" and were bound for hell unless she killed them while they were still innocent.
She was delusional. Nutso. Psychotic. Out of her mind. Crazy. But she was not legally insane, a jury found in 2002.
Jurors back then went along with the prosecution theory that Yates knew right from wrong because, for example, she identified Satan as the source of her murderous impulses. And Satan, as we all know, is wicked.
An appellate court overturned the verdict. Not because it was an affront to common sense and decency to put Yates in prison instead of a mental hospital, but because a prosecution psychiatrist botched a key fact.
Expect a new verdict next week.
But don't expect a decision anytime soon from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the Debra Gindorf case.
Gindorf, like Yates, killed her children while in the throes of post-partum psychosis, doctors say.
It happened in 1985, when Gindorf was an unemployed 20-year-old single mother living in suburban Zion, estranged from her family and her physically abusive, alcoholic husband.
She fed 3-month-old Jason and 23-month-old Christina overdoses of sleeping medication before attempting to kill herself in what she said was a plan for the three of them to escape to heaven.
As medical understanding has grown of the massive changes in brain chemistry that afflict a very small percentage of new mothers, the courts have tended to show leniency and compassion to women who have killed their children while suffering that particular madness. In recent years, women who kill
their children while in the grip off post-partum psychosis tend to receive at most 2 years in prison.
But in 1986, Gindorf was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
That sentence was "was a miscarriage of justice" that needs a "humanitarian touch to correct." Who says so? Dr. Ronald Baron, the Highland Park psychiatrist who testified against Gindorf at her trial but has since weighed in on her behalf.
The Lake County state's attorney's office prosecuted Gindorf, but current State's Atty. Mike Waller has said that he does "not object to the governor granting relief" to Gindorf, now 42 and an inmate at Dwight Correctional Center, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
What does the Illinois Prisoner Review Board say? Its recommendations are confidential, but after Gov. George Ryan ignored Gindorf's case in his rush to empty Death Row as he scurried from office in 2003, the chairman of the review board waived the customary one-year waiting period for Gindorf to
refile. This was widely seen as a signal that the panel felt that her appeal had merit and that Blagojevich would show the good judgment that Ryan did not.
Oh, well.
As of Tuesday it will have been 1,188 days without a decision from the governor since Gindorf's April 2003 clemency hearing in the Thompson Center.. Blagojevich has ruled on some 700 other such petitions while in office, but he won't touch this one for reasons his spokesmen won't divulge.
My guess? He's afraid. He knows any decision he makes will require lots of explaining and make some people mad. He knows it's easier to let Gindorf rot in limbo than risk dropping a penny of political capital on a pathetic and remorseful woman.
Just about every year Blagojevich declares an "awareness month" for post-partum disease and signs an earnest, cheap little proclamation to suggest that he "gets it."
If he does, he'll free Debra Gindorf. But if he doesn't, well, he ought to have the courage after all this time to tell her "no," he believes justice demands she die in prison for what she did.
When people ask me why I'm so cynical about Blagojevich's character and courage, I simply tell them the story of how he ducks and dithers on Gindorf.
There is never a follow-up question.
Source : Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-0607180014jul18,1
The numbingly sad retrial of Andrea Yates is coming to a close in Texas this week, providing an opportunity to check in again on a similarly sad story out of Illinois.
In June 2001, Yates, then 36 and living in suburban Houston, killed her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years. She said she did it because the children weren't "righteous" and were bound for hell unless she killed them while they were still innocent.
She was delusional. Nutso. Psychotic. Out of her mind. Crazy. But she was not legally insane, a jury found in 2002.
Jurors back then went along with the prosecution theory that Yates knew right from wrong because, for example, she identified Satan as the source of her murderous impulses. And Satan, as we all know, is wicked.
An appellate court overturned the verdict. Not because it was an affront to common sense and decency to put Yates in prison instead of a mental hospital, but because a prosecution psychiatrist botched a key fact.
Expect a new verdict next week.
But don't expect a decision anytime soon from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the Debra Gindorf case.
Gindorf, like Yates, killed her children while in the throes of post-partum psychosis, doctors say.
It happened in 1985, when Gindorf was an unemployed 20-year-old single mother living in suburban Zion, estranged from her family and her physically abusive, alcoholic husband.
She fed 3-month-old Jason and 23-month-old Christina overdoses of sleeping medication before attempting to kill herself in what she said was a plan for the three of them to escape to heaven.
As medical understanding has grown of the massive changes in brain chemistry that afflict a very small percentage of new mothers, the courts have tended to show leniency and compassion to women who have killed their children while suffering that particular madness. In recent years, women who kill
their children while in the grip off post-partum psychosis tend to receive at most 2 years in prison.
But in 1986, Gindorf was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
That sentence was "was a miscarriage of justice" that needs a "humanitarian touch to correct." Who says so? Dr. Ronald Baron, the Highland Park psychiatrist who testified against Gindorf at her trial but has since weighed in on her behalf.
The Lake County state's attorney's office prosecuted Gindorf, but current State's Atty. Mike Waller has said that he does "not object to the governor granting relief" to Gindorf, now 42 and an inmate at Dwight Correctional Center, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
What does the Illinois Prisoner Review Board say? Its recommendations are confidential, but after Gov. George Ryan ignored Gindorf's case in his rush to empty Death Row as he scurried from office in 2003, the chairman of the review board waived the customary one-year waiting period for Gindorf to
refile. This was widely seen as a signal that the panel felt that her appeal had merit and that Blagojevich would show the good judgment that Ryan did not.
Oh, well.
As of Tuesday it will have been 1,188 days without a decision from the governor since Gindorf's April 2003 clemency hearing in the Thompson Center.. Blagojevich has ruled on some 700 other such petitions while in office, but he won't touch this one for reasons his spokesmen won't divulge.
My guess? He's afraid. He knows any decision he makes will require lots of explaining and make some people mad. He knows it's easier to let Gindorf rot in limbo than risk dropping a penny of political capital on a pathetic and remorseful woman.
Just about every year Blagojevich declares an "awareness month" for post-partum disease and signs an earnest, cheap little proclamation to suggest that he "gets it."
If he does, he'll free Debra Gindorf. But if he doesn't, well, he ought to have the courage after all this time to tell her "no," he believes justice demands she die in prison for what she did.
When people ask me why I'm so cynical about Blagojevich's character and courage, I simply tell them the story of how he ducks and dithers on Gindorf.
There is never a follow-up question.
Source : Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-0607180014jul18,1