Showing posts with label murder(attempted). Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder(attempted). Show all posts

Saturday, 23 April 2011

FILICIDE (attempted): Australia: Mother who drove into tree 'tried to kill her children'

Detectives arrested and charged the woman with three counts of attempted murder on Monday after the crash in an outer Adelaide suburb last Friday.
The four occupants of the car sustained minor injuries in the crash, were treated in hospital and have since been discharged.
It is understood the woman had a history of mental health issues, including schizophrenia.
Family contacted yesterday declined to speak to The Australian but expressed their concern over the impact of the case on the children's lives.
In recognition of this, a suppression order was made yesterday in Holden Hill Magistrates Court by magistrate Derek Sprod to protect the identities of the mother and children.
A bail hearing has been scheduled for April 28.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/mother-who-drove-into-tree-tried-to-kill-her-children/story-e6frg6nf-1226041805126

Sunday, 17 April 2011

FILICIDE (attempted): Kristen LaBrie sentenced for withholding cancer meds from autistic son

April 15, 2011
Kristen_Labrie_041511.jpg
Cheryl Senter/AP : Kristen LaBrie waiting to hear the judge's sentence today


LAWRENCE -- Kristen LaBrie, the mother who withheld cancer medications from her young autistic son who later died of his illness, was sentenced today to eight to 10 years in state prison for her conviction of attempted murder.
"At the end of the day, Ms. LaBrie’s actions were extended, secretive, and calculated. They were acts that really do chill one’s soul. This type of conduct really does demand punishment, albeit tempered with mercy," Essex Superior Court Judge Richard Welch said as he sentenced LaBrie.

A prosecutor had recommended that LaBrie serve 16 to 17 years in prison, while her defense attorney recommended one year, with a lengthy probation period.
A tearful LaBrie apologized at the sentencing hearing this morning for withholding the medicine from her son Jeremy Fraser. “I am remorseful for my actions and I wish I could have done things differently,” LaBrie told the court. "If I could do it differently, I would because I certainly miss my son every day.”
“I’m just really sorry for all of this, for everything it’s done to my family and everybody,” she said.
LaBrie, 38, who lived in Beverly and Salem, was convicted Tuesday on charges of attempted murder, assault and battery on a disabled person with injury, assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, and reckless endangerment of a child. Welch also sentenced her to five years of probation.
Authorities say her son was diagnosed with a treatable case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in October 2006, just after he turned 7, but Labrie failed to administer chemotherapy. By the time his doctors realized the boy was not taking his medication, his condition had progressed to leukemia. The boy was placed in the custody of his father, then died in a hospice in March 2009 at the age of 9.

"This was a tragic and difficult case," Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett said in a statement. "For the Commonwealth this prosecution was always about justice for Jeremy."
The defense had argued that LaBrie was overwhelmed by the pressures of caring for an ailing autistic son.
"Her judgment waned, her objectivity waned, and she made an awful, awful mistake," said defense attorney Kevin James.
But prosecutor Kate MacDougall said, "Jeremy was a child who could not speak for himself who was utterly vulnerable. There was a relationship of sacred trust that was betrayed by this defendant."
Welch said he felt sympathy for LaBrie, noting there was “little doubt that Ms. Labrie was placed in an extremely trying and exhausting situation” and he was certain that sometimes LaBrie felt that she was “confronting these monumental burdens all alone.”
But he said, “What the defendant was charged with and what she was found guilty of and what she did commit was the crime of attempted murder. As difficult as it is for us to understand, she had the specific intent to kill her young son and intentionally withheld potentially lifesaving medication from him in order to accomplish her goal of murder.”
And he said that it was in society’s interest to protect the vulnerable.
“In the last analysis, our society is judged on how we protect the most vulnerable members of that society, the children, the disabled. Jeremy Fraser being a child with moderately severe autism was one of society’s weakest and most beleaguered members. Society has a most significant interest in using the criminal justice system to discourage and prevent substantial injury to such disabled children,” he said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/04/sentencing_set.html?rss_id=Top+Stories

Saturday, 11 December 2010

INFANTICIDE: Virginia: Ashkea Johnson

By Brad Zinn/staff • bzinn@newsleader.com • December 9, 2010
STAUNTON — Jury selection in the murder trial of a Staunton teen accused of killing her baby last year is set to begin this morning in Staunton Circuit Court, and by Friday the 12-person jury is expected to begin deliberating the fate of 18-year-old Ashkea Johnson. Johnson is accused of smothering her infant daughter, 2 1/2-month-old Rosaleeia M. Johnson, the night of Nov. 15, 2009. The baby, found unconscious and not breathing, died four days later at Augusta Health in Fishersville after being taken off life support.
Johnson is charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
She confessed to police that she killed her child, and also admitted attempting to smother the baby a week before she was found unconscious, according to evidence presented at a March preliminary hearing and court transcripts,
Seventeen years old at the time of her baby's death, Johnson is being tried as an adult after the case was transferred from the juvenile court system.
In a rambling statement made to police in December 2009, Johnson initially claimed she found the baby with no pulse and tried to resuscitate her three times. After calling 911, Johnson told a Staunton police investigator that when rescue personnel arrived, "My sister handed it ... her to the fire department."
Questioned further, Johnson admitted she pressed a small, plastic disposable diaper bag over the baby's nose and mouth, transcripts show.
"I wasn't thinking straight," she told the investigator.
Johnson also confessed to trying to kill the baby a week before the Nov. 15 incident, and said she once dropped her child on purpose two weeks after she was born.
Johnson, who gave birth to her first child at the age of 14, told police she was confused and stressed, and tried to have her mother adopt her children to no avail.
Court records show Johnson has been ruled mentally competent to stand trial, but reports also note she suffers from bipolar disorder and started cutting herself in the sixth grade.
Earlier this week, a prosecution motion to prevent the defense from mentioning Johnson's mental state was denied, but Circuit Judge Humes J. Franklin Jr. cautioned both sides about broaching the issue. An earlier motion in August by the defense to have Johnson's confession thrown out was unsuccessful.
Johnson faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted in the killing.
http://www.newsleader.com/article/20101209/NEWS01/12090316