UK: Mother guilty of daughter murders

Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2009-09-21 18:36

Story here. Excerpt:

'Rekha Kumari-Baker, 41, admitted the killings but had denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Davina Baker, 16, and Jasmine Baker, 13, were killed with a kitchen knife in a frenzied attack in 2007.

A jury at Cambridge Crown Court took about 30 minutes to reach a verdict of guilty on both counts of murder. She will be sentenced on Tuesday.

The court heard Davina was stabbed 39 times at the house in Stretham, on 13 June 2007. There were defence wounds on the girl's body.
...
Jurors were told one theory was that Ms Kumari-Baker wanted to "wreak havoc" on her ex-husband David Baker by killing the girls.
...
Psychiatrist Lyle Hamilton - who was called to give evidence by Kumari-Baker's lawyers - said medical literature showed that women had killed children because they were "mentally ill" and because they were a "retaliatory type".'

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She got a minimum of 33 years before she becomes eligible for parole.

Andrea Yates here in the US initially got a stiff prison sentence too for murdering 5 children but she got off in a retrial with not guilty by reason of temporary insanity plea.

I suspect the same card will play in England with this child killer as it did here with Ms Yates. It is just a question of time; possibly a year or maybe two.

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Submitted by Luek on Tue, 2009-09-22 14:30

manonthestreet

Interestingly here the woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Well she could hardly say she did not do it. But the point is the jury could have convicted her of this and not murder. They where also given the opportunity and encouragement to do so by a psychiatrist who was probably presented to the court as an expert witness. Yet the jury rejected this. I find this interesting as quite frankly it is not usually the case. I however expect that this will not stick and in a few years we will hear an appeal on the grounds that insufficient consideration was made of the woman's mental state. Who know we may even get a new disease discovered which explains this type of behaviour perfectly.

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Submitted by trotter on Tue, 2009-09-22 19:56