Mother acquitted in sons’ deaths

TYLER, Texas (AP) — A woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons with a rock was acquitted yesterday of all charges after a jury determined she was legally insane during the killings.

A jury found that Deanna Laney did not know right from wrong May 9 when she killed her two older sons, ages 8 and 6, in the front yard and left the youngest, now 2, maimed in his crib. Mrs. Laney, 39, was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of capital murder and serious injury to a child.

Jurors deliberated about seven hours before reaching their verdict.

Mrs. Laney broke into tears as the verdict was read. Her husband, Keith Laney, sat emotionless. A few jurors cried and struggled to maintain their composure.

State law allows Mrs. Laney to be committed to a maximum security state hospital. Medical evaluations will dictate when she will be released.

Defense attorney Tonda Curry said the verdict doesn’t mean her client escaped punishment.

“Now and for the rest of her life, the punishment and torment that’s going on in her own head is more significant and more damaging to her than anything the criminal justice system could have done, other than death,” Miss Curry said.

In closing arguments earlier yesterday, prosecutors portrayed the killings last Mother’s Day weekend as deceptively planned and coldly executed.

“It was graphic, it was horrific and it was brutal,” prosecutor Matt Bingham told the jury.

Mrs. Laney had faced life in prison for the deaths of 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Luke, and the beating of Aaron, now 2.

Mr. Bingham pounded his fist in his hand as he recounted Joshua’s killing: “He got strike after strike after strike on his head to the point that his brains were coming out of his head like liquid.”

Defense attorneys argued that insanity was the only reason why a deeply religious mother who home-schooled her children would kill two of them and maim another without so much as a tear.

“There was no crying,” Miss Curry said. “She was insane. There is no other answer.”

All five mental health experts consulted in the case, including two for the prosecution and one for the judge, concluded that a severe mental illness caused Mrs. Laney to have psychotic delusions that rendered her incapable of knowing right from wrong during the killings — the standard in Texas for insanity.

Psychiatrists testified that Mrs. Laney believed she was divinely chosen by God — just as Mary was chosen to bear Christ — to kill her children as a test of faith and then serve as a witness after the world ended.

Prosecutors portrayed the killings as deceptively planned and coldly executed. They said that even if Mrs. Laney believed she was doing right by God, she had to have known she was doing wrong by state law. Her first call, they pointed out, was to 911 to summon authorities.