Mother cleared of poisoning son to death

Submitted by anthony on Fri, 2006-10-27 19:28

Sounds like this women and defense attorney have "Yated" (ie: Andrea Yates) the court system. All prescriptions for Prozac, Lexapro, Effexor and Zoloft will now come with a book: "100 Ways For a Mother To Kill Her Children" (and not do jail time). Story here. Excerpt:

'During the trial, the prosecution alleged that Williams, who was on antidepressants, killed her son because she felt she could not cope with caring for him.'

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Psych meds are getting an undeserved bad reputation because of cases like this. They don't "make" people go around murdering, no matter what you see in the media. Lawyers are taking advantage of the suspicion surrounding these medicines, especially when the behaviour of a woman is in question.
-Axolotl

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Submitted by axolotl on Fri, 2006-10-27 23:45

I agree. These "SSRI's are getting bad publicity because they seem to be a viable exuse in court (for women). The vast majority of individuals taking these medications have been diagnosed with a legitmate mental illness. Are these meds. over perscribed? (maybe so), but i blame incompetent mental health professionals. Al Jourgensen (who?) said it best: The Mind is a Terrible thing to Taste.

anthony

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Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2006-10-28 00:19

The way society views it:

When a woman kills some one - she was pushed to the edge by some one or something

When a man kills son one - he is evil.

Drugs are just another excuse. Though I do believe that medically prescribed SSRI and other anti-psychotic drugs have at least as much mind altering effects as illegal narcotics or excessive consumption of alcohol. But hey, since the huge majority of male murderers have some form of substance abuse problems we know from the fact that they still receive long sentences and even life and death sentences that the law does not see that as a excuse for killing. Unless of course the killer has a vagina of course.

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Submitted by Paragon on Sat, 2006-10-28 05:50

We need to be careful about making these allegations. There is no doubt that Andrea Yates killed her children. In this case the prosecution alleged that Williams killed her son; the defence argued that he died due to his medical condition. There is no indication that the jury came to their conclusion for any reason other than that they did not feel the prosecution had proven its case beyond all reasonable doubt.

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Submitted by Malcolm on Sun, 2006-10-29 11:32