Mom who threw tot in NY river can go home to India
Treatment and medication in India, with New York authorities monitoring her progress during five years of probation.Her lawyers called it a just result for a woman whose conduct was driven by a mental illness that emerged only in the days before she threw her daughter into the chilly river off Manhattan's Upper West Side, then leaped in herself, in May 2010.
"Ms. Silvia has always been a tremendously caring and loving mother, who at the age of 34 had no prior symptoms of mental illness and had no idea what was happening to her at the time of the incident," the law firm that represented her, Bingham McCutchen LLP, said in a statement. "Ms. Silvia has been in full remission now for nearly two years, and she has been a model patient in every category."
Over the roughly four days before the river plunge, the former high school math teacher from the southeast Indian state of Tamil Nadu thought she saw a strange bright light coming from her bedroom door during the night, had the idea that God had sent someone to clean her kitchen and felt her 6-year-old and people at the child's school were giving her unusual and frightening looks, prosecutors have said.
On the morning when Silvia and her younger daughter, Jessica Prithiviraj, would end up in the river, the mother believed she heard a dog in a playground tell her she also was a dog, then heard a voice command her to leap into the river as she and the toddler walked alongside it, prosecutors said in November, when they agreed to let her resolve the case by pleading not guilty because of mental illness. The Manhattan district attorney's office made only a handful of such pacts last year; they're sanctioned by state law for cases in which prosecutors believe an insanity defense would prevail at trial.
"I don't know what I was doing," Silvia said during her plea.
Insanity Defense Cases - News
McDaniel is not involved in Bishop's case, but has practiced criminal defense in Huntsville for decades. He says if you think Bishop's attorneys will have an easy time proving she is insane, that's only half the task. "People always say, 'Oh,
(FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - There have been hundreds of gruesome murder cases where the accused will plead not guilty by reason of insanity. If the defense works, victims' families often feel they've been denied justice and the defendant might ever
The Manhattan district attorney's office made only a handful of such pacts last year; they're sanctioned by state law for cases in which prosecutors believe an insanity defense would prevail at trial. "I don't know what I was doing," Silvia said during
Orange County's top prosecutor said he's prepared for a former Marine accused of killing four homeless men to put up an insanity defense or claim he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and should be found not guilty in the string of
By Mark Freeman A 51-year-old Medford man likely will offer a defense that he was mentally disturbed when he allegedly strangled his girlfriend to death and barricaded himself in the bathroom of a west Medford apartment before surrendering to police
QueryTracker.net: Writing Q&A: Using the Insanity Defense in Your ...
The test has changed significantly since the defense was first recognized in 1843. Courts applied several standards from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The 1982 trial of John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan, highlighted the controversy and prompted legislative changes. In most cases, there is little doubt that the accused committed the crime; the real issue is insanity. In Hinckley’s case, the defense arose early, and psychiatric evaluations–which took four months–began shortly after his arrest. The standard applied at trial was whether Hinckley could “appreciate the wrongfulness” of his actions, and the government had the burden of proving that Hinckley was sane. After three days of deliberations, the jury found him “not guilty by reason of insanity” on all counts. After the trial, Congress and many states changed their laws to shift the burden of proof to the defendant, meaning that a person claiming the defense must prove its essential elements. In essence, the presumption of innocence is now paired with a presumption of sanity. Currently, in federal cases, the defendant must prove that he has a "severe" mental disease which made him "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts." (I say he for simplicity’s sake, though I suspect most such criminal defendants are male–Squeaky Fromme and Lorena Bobbit aside.) The language of state standards varies somewhat, but is similar. Note that proof of mental illness alone is not enough. Several states give jurors an additional verdict choice: “guilty but mentally ill.” A handful of states (Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah) do not allow the defense at all, but allow the defendant to introduce evidence of mental conditions to show that he did not have the level of knowledge or intent (“mens rea”) for the crime charged.