INFANTICIDE: Ohio: China Arnold put her child in the microwave oven

21st May 2011

  Sentenced: China Arnold got life in prison without parole

An Ohio woman convicted of killing her month-old baby daughter in a microwave oven was spared the death penalty and sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.
Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman sentenced China Arnold, 31, of Dayton, who psychologists testified showed no signs of serious mental illness.
Arnold declined to make a statement during her sentencing.
Arnold was convicted last week of aggravated murder by the same jury that recommended her punishment. Jurors deliberated about six hours Thursday and Friday.
Prosecutors say Arnold intentionally put 28-day-old Paris Talley in a microwave and turned it on after a fight with her boyfriend. The couple had argued over whether the boyfriend was the infant's biological father.
Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion argued that the evidence pointed as much to the boyfriend as it did to the child's mother, who Mr Rion said was drunk at the time.
After Friday's hearing, Mr Rion told the Dayton Daily News he would appeal. He did not immediately return a message left at his office by The Associated Press.
The prosecutor's office had no immediate comment.
Medical experts testified that the baby died quickly after her temperature reached between 107 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. They said she probably was in the microwave for more than two minutes.

 

Dr. Marcella Fierro, retired chief medical examiner for Virginia, said: 'She died because she was overheated. She was cooked'.

It was Arnold's third trial in her daughter's 2005 death. Her first trial ended in a mistrial when new witnesses surfaced just before closing arguments.

  Sad: One-month-old baby Paris Talley succumbed to her injuries after being 'cooked' in a microwave oven

Her second trial ended in a guilty verdict and a life sentence. But an appeals court overturned the conviction when it found prosecutorial misconduct and said the trial judge erred in not allowing a relevant witness to testify.
The sentencing phase was delayed earlier this week to allow time for a mental exam of Arnold. Two psychologists testified Thursday that Arnold was of average intelligence and showed no signs of serious mental illness.
Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon said Arnold suffered from a 'low-grade chronic depressive condition' as well as alcohol and drug abuse. He said he found nothing 'that would have justified the death of this child'.
In arguing for the death sentence, Assistant Montgomery County Prosecutor Dan Brandt told the jury there were no factors that mitigate the 'purposeful murder of baby Paris in that microwave'.
Defense attorney Kevin Lennen said that death or life in prison would be a tough penalty, but death should go only to the worst offenders. He pointed to evidence that Arnold was drunk at the time of the baby's death.
Assistant Prosecutor Dan Brandt told jurors that Arnold's actions were 'even more purposeful' than a slaying with a gun or knife, the Dayton Daily News reported.
During closing arguments, Mr Brandt told jurors: 'Baby Paris is without life, but she's not without a voice. Please listen to her'.

Evidence: Baby Paris was badly burned after being put in a microwave oven - she died in hospital the next day.

Mr Brandt claimed that Arnold had to carry the baby over, place her in the microwave, shut the door and press buttons. Then she waited while her child cooked to death, Brandt claimed.
Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion had told jurors: 'This doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't. I've been watching your faces'.
The prosecutor cut and fit evidence to show 'this loving mother somehow was so evil that she killed her baby in this way', he said.
Mr Rion has said he 'realised from the first day' that Arnold was innocent.
Prosecutors said Arnold had a criminal past and was convicted of abduction in 2000 and forgery in 2002.
Arnold reportedly took Paris to the hospital the following day but she succumbed to her injuries.
Arnold was initially arrested but then released due to lack of evidence.  She was re-arrested in November 2006.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389418/China-Arnold-sentenced-life-prison-escapes-death-penalty-cooking-month-old-baby-Paris-death-microwave-oven.html#ixzz1MzVx90HS

FILICIDE: a discussion

JOCELYN NOVECK  4/17/2011

NEW YORK — "How could she?"

It's the headline du jour whenever a horrific case emerges of a mother killing her kids, as Lashanda Armstrong did when she piled her children into her minivan and drove straight into the frigid Hudson River.

Our shock at such stories is, of course, understandable: They seem to go against everything we intuitively feel about the mother-child bond.

But mothers kill their children in this country much more often than most people would realize by simply reading the headlines; by conservative estimates it happens every few days, at least 100 times a year. Experts say more mothers than fathers kill their children under 5 years of age. And some say our reluctance as a society to believe mothers would be capable of killing their offspring is hindering our ability to recognize warning signs, intervene and prevent more tragedies.

And so the problem remains.

"We've learned how to reduce auto fatalities among kids, through seatbelt use. We've learned how to stop kids from strangling on the strings of their hoodies. But with this phenomenon, we struggle," says Jill Korbin, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University who has studied mothers who kill children. "The solution is not so readily apparent."

How common is filicide, or killing one's child, among mothers? Finding accurate records is nearly impossible, experts say. One problem is classification: The legal disposition of these cases varies enormously. Also, many cases doubtless go unreported or undetected, such as very young mothers who kill their newborns by smothering them or drowning them in a toilet after hiding the entire pregnancy.

 

"I'd say a mother kills a child in this country once every three days, and that's a low estimate," says Cheryl Meyer, co-author of "Mothers Who Kill Their Children."

Several databases track such killings but do not separate mothers from fathers or stepfathers. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System reported an estimated 1,740 child fatalities — meaning when a child dies from an injury caused by abuse or neglect — in 2008.

And according to numbers compiled from 16 states by the National Violent Death Reporting System at the CDC Injury Center, 130 children were killed in those states by a parent in 2008, the last year for which numbers were available.

"The horrific stories make the headlines, so we believe it hardly ever happens," says Meyer, a professor of psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. "But it's not a rare thing."

Meyer and co-author Michelle Oberman interviewed women at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. They found that of 1,800 women at the prison, 80 were there for killing their children.

It's also a phenomenon that defies neat patterns: It cuts across boundaries of class, race and socio-economic status. Oberman and Meyer came up with five categories: filicide related to an ignored pregnancy; abuse-related; neglect-related; assisted or coerced filicide (such as when a partner forces the killing); and purposeful filicide with the mother acting alone.

Different as these cases are, though, there are some factors that link the poor teen mother who kills her baby in a bathroom with an older, wealthier mother, and one of them, experts say, is isolation.

"These women almost always feel alone, with a total lack of emotional support," says Lita Linzer Schwartz, a professor emeritus of psychology and women's studies at Penn State, and co-author of "Endangered Children."

Schwartz says women are often not checked for mental illness after their crimes, and that is unfortunate.

"Women need better treatment not only before, but after," she says. "They get tormented in prison, when often what they need is psychological care."

The issue of mental illness is a tricky one. Some women are obviously seriously ill — for example, Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children, one by one, in the bath in 2001, believing she was saving them from the devil. After first being convicted of capital murder, she was found innocent by reason of insanity and remains in a mental institution.

But Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, says cases are not always so obvious — sometimes depression is enough to send a woman over the edge. "Almost all these women are not in their right minds (when they commit these acts)," she says. "The debate is whether they're sick enough to be called insane."

Besides isolation, another frequent similarity in the cases is a split with the father of the children. "So often there is an impending death or divorce or breakup," Meyer says.

In the case of Armstrong, the 25-year-old mother had apparently argued with the father of three of her young children — about his cheating, according to the woman's surviving son — just before driving into the river on Tuesday in Newburgh, N.Y. (Her 10-year-old son climbed out a window and survived. Three children, ages 11 months to 5 years, died.)

This was one of those cases where the mother was committing suicide and decided to take the kids with her. To rational observers, there is nothing more perverse. But in the logic of many these mothers, experts say, they are protecting their children by taking them along. Armstrong's surviving son told a woman who helped him that his mother had told the kids: "If I'm going to die, you're all going to die with me."

Experts have heard that many times before.

"We see cases where the mother thinks the child would be better off in heaven than on this miserable earth," for example with an abusive father, says Schwartz. "They think it's a good deed, a blessing."

A good deed — performed by a good mother. "It's how the sick mother sees herself being a good mother," says Oberman. "Once she decides she can't bear the pain anymore, she thinks, 'what would a good mother do?'"

Korbin, the anthropologist, says in prison interviews she conducted, some women who had killed their children were still certain they were good mothers. And it's that very ideal of being a "good mother" that is holding our society back from taking preventive action or intervening in a potentially abusive situation before it's too late, Korbin says.

"Often the people around these women will minimize a troubling instance that they see, saying, 'Well, she's a good mother.' We err on the side of being supportive of women as being good mothers, where we should be taking seriously any instance where a mother OR father seems to be having trouble parenting. ANY instance of child maltreatment is serious."

In fact, Armstrong's aunt told reporters that her niece "was a good mother. She was going through some stuff."

Meyer, for one, is angry that the people around Armstrong didn't take heed of the warning signs earlier.

"To me this is a textbook case," she says. "This woman was completely overwhelmed. Almost always, you can find people who say, 'I knew something was wrong.' This did not come out of the blue. I say shame on the people who saw signs and didn't do anything. This is your responsibility, too."

Not that it is easy to know when and how to raise an alarm bell. "I think often people just don't know what to do," says Korbin.

But, she adds, it doesn't help to gape at a few of the more shocking cases and then move on, without recognizing the scope of the problem and the factors that link many of these cases.

"People focus on the spectacular cases — and they are spectacular," she says. "But that means another few kids will die over the next few days without much notice, and that is very sad."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42634832/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

FILICIDE (multiple, attempted): Ohio:Jacqueline R. Stout

CANTON —

Jacqueline R. Stout didn’t want to die alone when she killed herself, so she drugged her two children, possibly with Kool-Aid laced with prescription pills, authorities say.
Stout and the children survived, and police have charged the 24-year-old mother with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of child endangering.
Canton police Lt. Scott Beard said Stout, of 811 15th St. NE, was arrested Thursday after her release from Mercy Medical Center.
Her children, ages 4 and 6, remain at Akron Children’s Hospital, but are out of intensive care, said Michael Vaccaro, legal counsel for the Stark County Department of Job and Family Services, which has taken emergency temporary custody of the children.
A hearing on the issue of scheduled for today in Stark County Family Court, and Job and Family Services’ court filing provides more details about the incident and the family.

TWO SUICIDE ATTEMPTS
The chain of events leading up to Wednesday’s incident started Monday, when Jacqueline Stout initially attempted suicide, according to the court filing. Her two children stayed with their father, Adam Stout, 25, of Plain Township, until she was released from the hospital on Wednesday.
Adam Stout — who is estranged from Jacqueline — drove her home and left her to care for the children when they got home from school, believing that she seemed all right, according to the court filing.
Adam Stout could not be reached Thursday for comment.
Just before 2 p.m., Stout sent her husband a text message stating that she was suicidal and had just tried to kill his children. He didn’t get the message right away, and Stout followed with a phone call a minute later stating that she had given the children a lot of medication, according to the court filing.
Adam Stout drove to his wife’s home and called 911. The children were sleeping and Jacqueline Stout was on a couch with a knife in her hand and had been cutting her arm, the filing said. All three were lethargic.
Jacqueline Stout was unable to tell hospital staff what medication she had taken or what she had given the children, but she also reported that “she had taken 60 pills of 16 different types of medication,” according to the court filing.
The 6-year-old boy said his mother had given him “more than four” pills that were “red, green and blue,” and had crushed the pills and put them into his Kool-Aid, according to the court filing.
The 4-year-old girl also reported drinking Kool-Aid given by her mother.
Vaccaro said the agency is still looking into the type and amount of medication involved, as well as the manner in which it was given to the children.
On Thursday, police and an investigative caseworker talked to Jacqueline Stout. She told them that she got into an argument with her husband, who told her “that he was leaving and she shouldn’t ever call him again,” according to the court filing.
Stout said she then wanted to kill herself, but didn’t want the children to know, so she gave them medication to make them go to sleep.  “When questioned further, mother admitted that she wanted to kill the children so that they could ‘go with her’ when she died,” according to the court filing.

CHILDREN REMOVED LAST YEAR
This isn’t the family’s first involvement with Job and Family Services. In January 2010, the agency removed the children from the Stout home.
The main concerns in that case involved Adam Stout’s “severe mental health issues,” his attempt to kill himself with prescription medication in 2009 and concerns about violence in the home. They prompted the agency's involvement, according to court records.
The agency placed the children with relatives, but returned them to Jacqueline Stout in May on the condition that the family remain under the protective supervision of Job and Family Services. Adam Stout was no longer living in the home.
During the earlier case, a psychological evaluation revealed no concerns about Jacqueline Stout’s mental health, and didn’t indicate that she was having thoughts of suicide, Vaccaro said.
Stout followed the case plan, accepted the services offered to her and was able to reunite with her children, which is the goal in these types of cases, Vaccaro said.  In December the agency ended its nearly year-long involvement with the family.
The agency had no further contact with the family until Wednesday, and had been unaware of Stout’s suicide attempt earlier in the week, Vaccaro said.

http://www.cantonrep.com/topstories/x1055385606/Canton-mom-charged-with-attempted-murder