 04-10-2004, 11:38 PM | #1 |
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Southwest....ap/index.html Quote: Deanna Laney, 39, also said she felt embroiled in spiritual warfare, considered killing herself after her arrest and worried how her surviving son would cope, according to a transcript of a pretrial psychiatric interview obtained by The Dallas Morning News for a report in Friday editions.
Laney was found innocent by reason of insanity Saturday in the deaths of 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Luke, and the beating of Aaron, now 2. Aaron's eyesight is impaired, and doctors say he will never live independently.
The jury found Laney suffered from a severe mental illness that caused her not to know right from wrong -- the standard in Texas for insanity -- when she bashed her sons' heads with rocks last Mother's Day weekend.
In the transcript of an interview in December with prosecution psychiatrist Park Dietz, Laney said she refused medication until after Joshua's birthday in late July. She told another psychiatrist she smelled sulfur in her cell and thought it was a sign the devil was near.
Aaron, left, Luke and Joshua Laney, right, pose in an undated family photograph.
Laney said she didn't mention that earlier because she thought everything happening to her "was spiritual warfare, and I didn't think he would understand any of it," the newspaper reported.
"I didn't want to kill my kids at all. I felt I like I had no choice," she said in the transcript. "Because God told me to do that, and I was taught you obey God."
Laney said after taking the medication, she wasn't so sure the beatings were God's will. "I started realizing that he wouldn't do something like that," she said.
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