Postpartum psychosis stirs Texas controversy

A proposal to carve out a reduced penalty for a very limited type of infanticide is causing quite a furor in Texas.

The law being proposed by two state legislators would make postpartum disorder a legal defense for women who kill their children in the first 12 months of life. The defense would not come into play until after a conviction. Then, at the sentencing phase, jurors could hear mitigating expert testimony about the mother's mental state that could reduce the sentence to a state jail term.

Similar laws are on the books in 29 nations -- including Britain, Australia, and Canada -- but this would be the first in a U.S. state.

Currently, postpartum psychosis cases are very disjointed under the law; some women are found insane and go to mental hospitals, while others with almost identical crimes are found guilty of murder and go to prison. Women may still attempt an insanity defense if this law is passed, but it is difficult to prevail under the narrow legal theory of insanity.

It will be interesting to see whether the modest law passes. If it does, that will be a sign that the Hang 'em High state is becoming a kinder, gentler place.

It won't come easy, though. Since the legislation was proposed last week, Texas talk radio and the internet have been abuzz with amateur pundits who fear a wave of mothers murdering their children if they know they can get away with it.

What a joke. Most women who kill their children while in a state of postpartum psychosis or severe depression are so overwhelmed with guilt when they regain their senses that they can barely go on. Many commit suicide the first chance they get.

Readers will recall that Texas was the site of probably the most high-profile case of filicide in recent years. Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001, was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remains psychiatrically hospitalized.

After that came Dee Schlosser, who in 2004 killed her daughter by cutting off her arms. Police found Schlosser soaked in blood and humming a hymn; she believed her deed was an offering to God. She too was found insane.

The Schlosser case may be making Texans especially prone to outrage at the moment. Just a few months ago, they learned Schlosser is being released from a state mental hospital, and some equate that to "getting away with murder." But as Lucy Puryear, MD, an expert witness at Yates' insanity trial, commented over at Women in Crime Ink:

Dee Schlosser will never live a carefree life. She must live with the knowledge and memory of killing her child. She will no longer be able to care for or have contact with her other children, and her marriage ended in divorce. What kind of life will she have? Can you imagine waking up every day to that horror?

She is no longer psychotic, she is on medication, she will be monitored by a psychiatrist to make sure that she remains well. So why should she remain in the hospital; just so our sensibilities are appeased? That's a waste of money. Her being in the hospital does not protect you or your children. Dee Schlosser has no intention of coming to your house to cut off the arms of your child.

Puryear makes a good point. And probably most people would agree, when they think about it, that women like Schlosser and Yates aren't much of a danger to society. The problem is that people don't think. A mother killing her child triggers such visceral rage that the only color people see is red.

Grits for Breakfast

For further information:

• Text of the proposed legislation (HB 3318)
• Grits for Breakfast: Should postpartum psychosis be a legal defense?
• Postpartum Progress blog: Will Texas Be First State With An Infanticide Law?
• Dallas Morning News: Proposed Texas House bill would recognize postpartum psychosis as a defense for moms who kill infants

Forensic Training Institute – April 16

Diagnostic Controversies In Forensic Practice

For those of you in or near California, it's not too late to register for this full-day training workshop coming up in just three weeks. It is presented by yours truly and Craig Lareau, JD, PhD, ABPP, who has just written an excellent chapter on the DSM-IV for the upcoming 6th edition of the classic Faust (Ziskin) reference work, Coping with Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony.

We are gearing this toward advanced-level forensic practitioners. Topics include:

• The DSM in court
• Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopathy
• Diagnosis in Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) proceedings
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The all-day (9:00-4:00) training is a preconvention special hosted by the California Psychological Association in Oakland. It provides 6 units of CE credits, and costs $175 for CPA members and $225 for non-members.

Click HERE for more information and to register online.

Gender twist on "post-apocalpytic trolls"

I've written previously about troll colonies. They are the exiled sex offenders living under bridges, including most famously the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Florida. Now, for perhaps the first time, a woman has been forced to join their ranks. Here is what one columnist had to say about this sad, and senseless, development in a world gone mad:

Woman joins sex-offender group
Guest essay by Fred Grimm, Miami Herald*

It's as if Voncel Johnson has been thrust into a bizarre social experiment.

Forcing so many men to live like post-apocalyptic trolls beneath a bridge in the middle of Biscayne Bay wasn't quite mad enough. Now they've added a woman.

For two years, a colony of convicted sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway has lived in a public health travesty, without water or toilets or electrical service. They sleep in tents, shacks, the back seats of cars in the last realistic address in metropolitan Miami unaffected by city and county sex-offender residency laws.

The numbers have been growing steadily as more convicted sex offenders emerge from prison and are consigned to finish out their wretched lives under a bridge.

The population was up to 52 men Monday. And Voncel Johnson.

Gender equity

In a peculiar nod to gender equity, the Florida Department of Corrections informed her last week that she too had only one residency option in Miami-Dade County -- the Tuttle. ''They just give me a blanket and a pillow and sent me . . . here?'' she asked, talking over the incessant thump-thump-thump of the freeway traffic overhead. "I just broke down.''

A community backward enough to create a subterranean de-facto prison camp of male sex offenders thrusts a single woman into the mix -- just to see what happens.

It's an ironic setting for Voncel Johnson. The 43-year-old woman, who grew up in poverty and neglect in the Brownsville section of Miami, told me she was sexually molested at age 6 and gang-raped at 16. ''I have a hard time trusting men,'' she said.

In 2004, Johnson pleaded guilty to a charge of lewd and lascivious exhibition (without physical contact) with a minor. She claimed Monday the charge was unfounded but at the time a plea offer with one year probation and no prison time seemed prudent. Except she twice failed to meet sex-offender registration requirements. Her probation was revoked. She did 10 months at Broward Correctional Institute.

Common refrain

She repeated a common refrain -- sometimes delusional -- among the bridge outcasts. "I never would have done that plea deal if I'd known they'd send me here. I could've fought those charges.''

But offender laws leave the state Department of Corrections no options for a sex offender. Voncel Johnson's parole officer did find her a motel room for three days last week. And she was offered a slot in a residential offender program in another county. But Johnson refused to leave Miami. "All my family lives here. I've never been any place but Miami.''

It was probably a foolish decision, but Johnson harbors some vague notion about gutting it out beneath the Tuttle until her parole ends May 5. ''Then I can find some place to live.'' She seems unable to grasp that residency restrictions are forever.

Meanwhile, the men beneath the Tuttle gave her a battered old camper trailer. ''We watch out for her,'' insisted Juan Carlos Martin, who has been under the bridge so long that the address on his driver's license reads ''Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge.'' He said it was as if city, county and state officials purposely cram more and more men into an unliveable, hopeless, crowded space, knowing that eventually something awful might happen. And now they add a woman.

Martin said, "They need to get her out of here.''

*From today's Miami Herald, posted with the written permission of columnist Fred Grimm. More columns by Fred Grimm are HERE.

Related blog posts:

• Trolls evicted (February 14, 2008)
• Exiles in the promised land (December 13, 2007)
• Sex offenders must live as trolls (April 16, 2007)
• A bridge as a last resort (May 1, 2008) – Guest essay by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat about a similar situation in Washington
• Exiles in their own land: Sex offenders and the history of banishment in Western culture (September 14, 2007)

Sex Offender Laws: Failed Policies, New Directions

Here's an important new book for you folks who work with sex offenders:

In response to many high-profile cases of sexual assault, federal and state governments have placed a number of unique criminal sanctions on sex offenders. These include residency restrictions, exclusionary zones, electronic monitoring, and chemical castration. However, the majority of sex offender policies are not based on empirical evidence, nor have they demonstrated any significant reductions in offender recidivism. In fact, some of these policies have unintended consequences, which actually increase the likelihood of sexual offenses.

In this book, Richard Wright critically analyzes existing policies, and assesses the most effective approaches in preventing sex offender recidivism. This provocative and timely book draws from the fields of criminal justice, law, forensic psychology, and social work to examine how current laws and policies are enacted and what to-date is known about their efficacy. In response to the failed policies of sex offender laws, this book presents alternative models and approaches to sex offense laws and policies.

Topics include:

• History and politics of sex offender laws
• Internet sex stings
• Registration and community notification laws
• GPS monitoring
• Residency restrictions
• Chemical and surgical castration
• Civil commitment
• Death penalty
• Containment approach
• Sexual violence and restorative justice
• Victim impact

Richard G. Wright is a criminal justice professor at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts and a nationally known expert on sex offender laws.

Crazy but sane, Texas court rules

Remember Andre Thomas, the eye-plucking Texas prisoner I blogged about back in January? The delusional schizophrenic guy who killed his wife and two children, ripped out their hearts, and then walked into a police station and confessed? The fellow who plucked out one eye shortly after the crime, and the other eye just a couple of months ago?

Yesterday, in rejecting an appeal of his death sentence, a Texas appellate court ruled that Thomas "is clearly 'crazy,' but he is also 'sane' under Texas law."

At Thomas' trial, the defense argued that the killings were the result of insane delusions caused solely by Thomas' mental disease. Prosecutors countered that his psychosis was caused or aggravated by his voluntary use of alcohol, drugs and prescription drugs.

The court also rejected an appeal argument that Thomas was not competent to stand trial at the time of his 2005 trial:

"Although reasonable people might well differ on the questions of whether (Thomas) was sane at the time he committed these murders or competent at the time he was tried, those issues were appropriately addressed by the defense, the prosecution, trial judge, and the jury during the trial," wrote Judge Cathy Cochran of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in a concurring opinion.

Scott Henson over at Grits for Breakfast found the ruling ludicrous:

It's just ridiculous to send somebody who's so obviously nuts to death row - what's the moral point of killing a guy who'd mutilate himself to death if you let him? What's the insanity defense for if not cases like this one? … How can the court just assume Thomas' substance abuse wasn't a symptom of his mental illness - a form of self-medication, perhaps? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Psychiatrist Lucy Puryear, writing at Women and Crime Ink, agreed:

Non-mentally ill people do not pluck their own eyes out for some secondary gain…. To those of you who would suggest that I am soft on crime, consider this novel idea. How about we make mental health treatment available in the community to those who need it. Had Mr. Thomas been adequately treated and monitored he never would have killed his family or plucked out his eye. Three people would be alive today and an enormous amount of money would be saved keeping him out of the prison system. That's not soft on crime, that's preventing crime.

As one solution, Dr. Puryear advocates specialized mental health courts, which are popping up quite regularly in courts around the United States these days:

Instead of the revolving door from prison to back on the streets where psychiatric care is lacking, then back in prison when another crime is committed, these persons can be put into a system where follow-up is mandatory and resources are available.

Tragically, Thomas had twice sought psychiatric help at local hospitals shortly before the crime, but had not stuck around voluntarily and could not be detained against his will.

Competent and sane, you betcha.

The Dallas News story is HERE.

Wired update on fMRI court case

Wired reporter Alexis Madrigal has just written a comprehensive update on the breaking news story about an attempt to get the "No Lie MRI" introduced in court.

Her article is online HERE, and includes links to other related coverage. My prior blog posts on this topic are HERE and HERE. The Deception Blog has additional links.

Hat tip: Ken Pope