Personal Responsibility for the Men Too (and their brand of Religion), Steve ?
The Brownwood Bulletin
Friday April 14, 2006
Op Ed: Columnists
Personal responsibility lacking in recent court cases — Steve Nash
It’s open season on children — been that way for awhile.
We declared that with a Supreme Court decision in 1973, and since then, we’ve had many occasions to affirm that we really don’t put much value on the lives of children.
The most recent affirmation: we gave a “pass” to a woman in North Texas who severed her 10-month-old daughter’s arms with a kitchen knife. The woman claimed at her capital murder trial that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, and the judge declared a mistrial after jurors couldn’t reach a verdict.
Then the judge heard the case, and he found her not guilty.
That verdict indicates that the little girl’s life didn’t matter, her death inconsequential. Do you ever wonder how much that child suffered or what her final moments of life must have been like?
What horrendous act did this child ever commit to deserve this?
The prosecutor in the case was quoted in a recent Associated Press article as saying the verdict shows lawmakers need to revisit the state’s insanity defense law. You think?
A state legislator was quoted by the AP as defending the verdict and existing insanity laws. He said there’s gotta be room for some common sense in these cases.
Exact-a-mundo.
I’m just not seeing any.
My point is not to wax obsessive about this particular case, although it does infuriate me. My point is not to argue about supposed insanity as a defense, although I do tend to reject it as an excuse.
What I can’t fathom that is in too many — not every, but too many — cases, we just don’t seem to get excited about the suffering and murders of children. Too often we go out of our way to make or accept excuses for the perpetrators and then, if we mete out any punishment, we go easy. In too many cases, animals have more rights than children.
The AP reminds us that the case involving the severed arms is the latest in a string of cases in which women murder their children and then plead insanity.
We have all but given a pass to Andrea Yates, who confessed to drowning her five children in a bath tub but claimed innocence by insanity.
Another Texas woman was acquitted by reason of insanity for bludgeoning her two children to death in 2003.
We watch casually as young women secretly give birth, then callously kill their own babies or simply abandon them in a trash can to die.
It takes a lot to shock us — something along the lines of Columbine or other school shootings. That finally makes us take a little notice, but unless the perpetrators end their own lives in the carnage, we really don’t do much to the shooters — we just go back to making excuses for them.
But should anyone be shocked at any of these events? We’ve been devaluing life for a long time. Make no mistake, we reap what we sow, and I believe the violence against children — and in some cases, committed by children — is the crop we’re sowing from the Supreme Court’s ruling on “privacy” in 1973.
And I’m not suggesting local law enforcement officials don’t take cases of child abuse or child murder seriously.
One local officer, speaking off the cuff, suggested an appropriate consequence for the woman who cut off her baby’s arms, and it wasn’t pretty.
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It’s always somebody else’s fault.
According to another recent AP article, the father of a freshman who died two years ago of a heroin overdose at a New England university has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming lax supervision contributed to his daughter’s death.
This was a terrible event, but maybe the young woman’s decision to use heroin contributed to her death. The lawsuit claims her death could have been prevented if university officials provided more student counseling and kept drug dealers off campus, according to the AP.
I am sorry that this happened, but where is the concept of personal responsibility? We apparently think it’s someone else’s responsibility to control or excuse our own behavior.
We can go from the tragic to the ridiculous to see that principle. Oh, that coffee is hot? Well, gee ...
In 2004, a young woman’s family sued a major retailer in north Texas after she bought a shotgun at the store and used it to kill herself. The woman was a “diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic (who) assaulted police officers and was arrested for attacking a fellow customer at a (nearby store owned by the same company) where she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication,” the AP reported.
“Given all those signs, her parents say, another (store) just seven miles away should never have sold her the shotgun she used to kill herself at age 23 in 2003.”
I am sorry for this woman’s problems and her ultimate suicide. I do not accept the lawsuit’s contention that it was the store’s fault.
Steve Nash writes his column for the Brownwood Bulletin on Thursdays. He may be reached by e-mail at steve.nash@brownwoodbulletin.com.
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/04/13/op_ed/columnists/opinion05.txt
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Note from Steve Harris, Bulletin Reporter/Columnist Steve Nash will keep his distance from articles like the ones linked below which point out the obvious similarities in these cases.
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