A Long Good Friday
I think Christ must be especially sorrowful over all those those who wrongly killed or were killed in his name. Some of those killed or were killed in famous wars, some burned or were burned as famous heretics. But others were entangled in more strange and singular circumstances. The case that has been haunting me this week could be an episode of New York’s Law & Order. But it is real life in Indiana.
This past Monday, the Indiana Court of Appeals sat at Notre Dame Law School, hearing the case of Lawson v. State. Latisha Lawson was convicted of murder, and various lesser counts, for killing her two year old son in the course of exorcising a specific demon from his body. Rather than reporting this to the authorities, and giving her son a proper burial, she waited (for months) for him to be resurrected. She slept in the bed next to him for at least a month, and then hauled his body around in a container and a sack. (You can find the briefs here.)
There are some troubling features of the situation. It’s not entirely obvious to me from the briefs, for example, that she really intended to kill the child, or foresaw his death (she might have just been intending to give him the olive oil and vinegar combination in order to make him expel the demon by vomiting.) If she did intend to kill him so that Jesus would raise him, well most of us would say, “that’s insane.” The trouble is, however, that the legal definition of insanity is far narrower than our common sense definition.
At any rate, Lawson was convicted after a jury trial, and sentenced to over fifty years in prison. It is extremely difficult to overturn a jury verdict, and while it happens a lot on television, it’s rarely done in real life. Why? In part because the jury has the opportunity to assess the credibility of the witnesses, including the defendants, in person–not merely on paper, as happens in an appellate appeal.
As I said, the case haunts me, especially today. We human beings are so broken, so sinful, and so in need of redemption.
So please say a prayer for Latisha and her children, as you go about your Triduum.
This case sounds unusual. But could you explain why Latisha Lawson tried exorcising her two-year-old son in the first place? What was supposedly going wrong in her son? Why did she try exorcising him? What is her background with respect to exorcism? For example, had she herself been involved in exorcisms previously? If she herself had not previously been involved in conducting exorcisms, what exactly did she know about exorcisms?
Read the briefs–the factual statements at the beginning aren’t long. They will tell you as much as I know.
God help her and may her son rest in peace.
I hope no one finds this question offensive, but it is the first thing that popped into my mind. I can only imagine that the mother actually believed she was performing some kind of exorcism. What about religious freedom? Many states have laws that protect parents whose children die because the parents choose faith healing instead of traditional medicine. Where do you draw the line?
There is, in my opinion, a problem with the legal definition of insanity in this case. The mother belongs in a mental hospital, not a prison.
I think she did believe that she was performing an exorcism. And she performed the same procedure on the two older kids–and the procedure seemed designed to make the kids vomit, not die. In essence, she was force-feeding medicine. Would she have been charged with murder, say, if she had been administering syrup of ipecac to make the boy throw up after he ate poison berries, and inadvertently killed him in that way? But she didn’t call the ambulance after the procedure went horribly wrong.
If I had accidentally killed someone and honestly believed that God was going to raise that person from the dead, I wouldn’t call an ambulance, either. The fact that she slept in the same bed with the dead body for a month indicates to me her belief in the boy’s future resurrection was authentic. Of course, to me it also indicates that by any reasonable standard, she was mentally ill. She may have been able to tell right from wrong, but it sounds like she was doing what she thought was right. And she did it based on her religious beliefs.
Of course I have read only a few paragraphs about the case, but it just doesn’t sound like murder to me.
“God help her and may her son rest in peace.”
Amen.
Cathleen, why did the appellate court meet at Notre Dame?
“We human beings are so broken, so sinful, and so in need of redemption.”
Yes, we are. All of us. And it’s only on the days when we are paying attention, or have received grace, or however it works, that we have sense enough to know it.
But it is particularly horrifying when children are the victims or perpetrators of sin against others or themselves in the form of cutting, purging, self-harm, or suicide. We live in times when it is easy to despair, and we forget that children can fall into these deep chasms.
There are many studies that indicate that the MAJORITY of inmates in State prisons have serious mental illness. That is not to say they they are not culpable for their crimes, but it is easy to imagine that some percentage of those are simply not responsible and need mental health care rather than criminal incarceration. This is an indictment of our health care system as much as it is of our justice system. We can only pray for ALL the victims here.
In India, where so many priests are being sent here, middle class people employ children as virtual slaves to work in their homes. In extreme cases children are beaten and poorly fed. These are things we can do something about whereas the crazy women performing excorcism and killing her child are not always easy to correct since it is not known. These and so many other abuses of children throughout the world should be our focus and effort. Not the endless debates on abortion which are basically escapes form the responsibility of following Matthew 25: 36-41. So significant is the denial: “When did we see you in prison, hungry……and we did not help……”
The URL for the India story on child abuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/world/asia/india-shaken-by-plight-of-13-year-old-maid.html?scp=4&sq=child%20abuse%20in%20india&st=cse
Jim,
Indiana’s Court of Appeals has a “Appeals on Wheels” program by which they hold oral arguments in various locations throughout the state in addition to their chambers in Indianapolis (which are broadcast online and achived for later viewing). They have been to most of the universities and colleges in Indiana, and even some high schools. Here is a link to the program: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/appeals/2550.htm. The venues typically hold more people than the chambers in Indianapolis, so it is a good chance to expose students, teachers, attorneys and the public to how oral arguments are handled and, in some cases, allows the judges to go back home and show off the court to the communities where they practiced. Not sure if other states have similar programs.
David Nickol: Religious freedom is not absolute. Just like freedom of speech. The state’s compelling interest is to prevent homicide.
Definitely manslaughter at most, and why 55 years sentence.? forgetabout Juries and judges in Indiana.
David Nickol: Religious freedom is not absolute. Just like freedom of speech. The state’s compelling interest is to prevent homicide.
Grant Gallicho:
I think Cathy Kaveny raised a very interesting question when she asked, “Would she have been charged with murder, say, if she had been administering syrup of ipecac to make the boy throw up after he ate poison berries, and inadvertently killed him in that way?” It is my conjecture (admittedly based on little knowledge) that if the prosecutor and jury accepted the woman’s religious belief as sincere and legitimate that the boy was possessed and an exorcism was warranted, this death would have been seen as something other than murder. As I pointed out, there are laws in many states protecting parents from prosecution if their children die because the parents chose faith healing rather than conventional medical treatment.
Religious freedom would not have given the woman in this case the right to kill her child. But one could argue that she did have a right, based on her religious beliefs, to attempt an exorcism. If the legitimacy of an exorcism had been accepted, she could still have been found guilty of negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter or some such offense. But the exorcism itself would not have been viewed as a violent assault on the child, which I can only imagine the prosecutor and jury believed it to be.
ISTM that the ultimate factual question is: did the mother break the bone in the child’s neck that resulted in his death? We know that both the mother and her friend were trying to hold the child down, which indicates that he was fighting them. He was two years old, and two-year-olds can be quite strong, unlike a small infant.
Could the mother have inadvertantly held the child’s neck too hard in an effort to stop him from moving his head? (It was his head that had to be immobilized in order to give him the oil and vinegar.) How weak are those little bones in the neck? if they are weak in an adult, mustn’t they be even weaker in a two-year-old?
ISTM that the mother might have accidentally applied so much pressure to the child’s neck that the bone broke, resulting in its death. This is not certain — we don’t know whether *she* knew aobut the fragility of the bones. However, it is also possible that she intended to strangle him.
Since we cannot definitely say what her intention was, we cannot say that she murdered him.
Three things we know:
1. No matter how it happened, the child died because of what his mother did to him. He’d be alive if she hadn’t tried an exorcism.
2. Religious freedom isn’t absolute; a childn’s life cannot be endangered by those exercising their freedom to practice religion.
What we don’t know:
1. Is the woman truly insane? Andrea Yates, e.g., killed her children in the course of a long history of battling mental illness. Even though she believed a divine power was telling her to kill her children, she was also nuts. Does this lady have any history of mental disorder?
2. Say, she has no history of mental disorder, it might still be argued that, for some reason we don’t know, she went temporarily insane. If not, what we’re dealing with is a bald religious claim that a demon had entered a child who consequently needed exorcism, and that’s what his mother was trying to give him. Can endangering a child’s life be allowed in that situation?
No. However, is it reasonable to believe she didn’t know she was endangering his life? I suppose.
If the above comes down to these facts, i.e., a sane woman truly believing a demon had entered her child and needed exorcising did what she thought would relieve him of the demon, and erroneously believing she was not endangering his life, inadvertently killed him.
Under the law, I think that would be manslaughter with mitigating circumstances (she didn’t believe she was endangering the child; as his mother, she loved him, and has indeed endured a great loss as a result of his death). Any other legal finding would have to be based on 1. the judgment that any woman who truly believes demons can possess little boys and exorcisms work is clearly insane, or 2. the woman lied about something, be it her motive, or what really happened in the course of the exorcism.
All in all, I’d think the main issue is the woman’s sanity. Does a jury always get this right? No.
In Andrea Yate’s case, even though she was clearly insane, the jury had been confused into believing that didn’t matter under the law. Judging sanity in such a case, without a clear history of insanity, would hinge on how a jury judges the idea of demonic possession. Do ordinary people even accept that possiblity anymore? And how do they judge those who do? I’d have thought most would judge any mother who did this to be insane. But apparently not. On the other hand, this jury, like the one in the Yates case, may have simply been confused by a technicality of the law.
“Three things we know…”
Oops….math was never my forte.
Pray for all children indeed who are under the power of many incompetents if not criminals. Jesus abhorred this the most and woe to those who harm the little ones. These acts truly cry out to the heavens for reparation and healing.
“Religion” is a big tent. Surely many children throughout the world die in similar circumstances but without their stories making the news. I presume that the hook here is “exorcism”, which no doubt conjures up both horror movies and Catholicism.
https://www.google.com/search?q=exorcism+latisha-lawson
Instead of focusing on this particular sensational news story, we might consider all the other children who have died or are yet to die through child abuse.
David,
The case is sensational, but for law students it is also important. What is the mens rea actually required for murder? Is the definition of insanity under the law adequate? How do mistaken beliefs and religious beliefs affect both questions?
I made my “Mercy and Justice” class attend the oral argument and read the briefs.
Cathleen –
i have read that in a murder case you don’t have to prove a motive. But the notion of motive seems to enter into the definition of “murder”. Where have I gone wrong?
In today’s NY Times there is another story on human trafficking. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/07/world/europe/young-men-flock-to-spain-for-sex-with-trafficked-prostitutes.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Notable is that women are promised jobs and then forced into prostitution. Many times their families are willing accomplices.
The Vatican has issued documents on this problem. PASTORAL MINISTRY FOR THE LIBERATION OF STREET WOMEN. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/migrants/pom2007_104-suppl/rc_pc_migrants_pom104-suppl_orientamenti-en.html But it has not been a focused problem, especially in the US where one would think that abortion and same sex marriage is the central problem facing followers of Jesus.
Those who care about the gospel have to understand that without an energetic outreach to such downtrodden women, the church loses its credibility.
Today the reading about Abraham and Isaac sounded quite different because of this post. Abraham, crazy of God!
Motive and intent aren’t the same thing. Motive is what we would call reason or purpose; intent is the degree to which the person knew what they were doing. Different states have different formulations, but the categories break down generally as, knew that what they were doing could inflict harm and (a) intended to or knew they would inflict harm or (b) acted without regard to the harm they might inflict. (a) and (b) are usually treated as the same for the purposes of the base offense, but (a) might be used to enhance penalties, depending, for instance, whether it was done for monetary gain (murder for hire), murder of law enforcement or witnesses, etc. Lesser charges are usually a factor for whether someone “should have known” (negligent homicide). Some states also have in between categories where the person acted with our without premeditation.
So in this case, I would say you have a person who did something with a significant amount of preparation and acted without regard to the harm they might cause. You would pause here to ask: did she have the requisite knowledge that what she was doing was harmful? On this point, the burden would be squarely on the defendant to show that she did not because an average person can and should be presumed to know that pressing down with force on a person’s throat has certain consequences, just like discharging a gun is an act of lethal force. (This might be diffeerent if she had given him something to drink that he drank voluntarily but turned out to have toxic side effects that an average person might not know about.)
In most of the cases involving religious defenses the parents cause death by their failure to act (to get medical care). In that respect, they are not the direct agent of the death. Here, the defendant was the direct agent of death. The child would not have died without her intervention.
It is possible that the defendant was mentally unstable to the point that she was unable to control her actions but it’s hard for me to be nearly as sympathetic to the defendant as Cathy. You can’t hide behind religion to justify the use of lethal force, not unless you are prepared to endorse honor killings and various other criminal acts that are prompted by sincere religious belief.
Barbara –
Thanks very much. That clarifies a lot. Your point about her making preparations certainly indicates that she intended to do what she did, whether or not she understood fully how badly it could go wrong. Further, given that she has two other children, she must have had at least a pretty good notion of how fragile little kids’ necks are. Makes you wonder where the line is between murder and manslaughter, if there even can be such a line. Terrible, terrible problems.