Postpartum psychosis, infanticide and the law

Abstract

In the past few years postpartum phychosis has been offered as a legal defense in a small number of deeply disturbing infanticide cases in several American jurisdictions. These cases have attracted a great deal of media attention, and fueled public discussion about the mental health of mothers who kill their own babies. From the perspective of the criminologist these cases present an extraordinary pattern of criminal behavior. Not merely a few isolated incidents, but a recurring pattern of the destruction of planned-for, wanted children by their own mothers with no apparent motive and under circumstances that suggest transitory postpartum phychoses. This article presents a detailed examination of specific cases aimed at exploration of the following issues: Are these women insane at the time of the act? Is their behavior the product of a diseased state of mind, or is it premeditated and willful? These issues lie at the core of the concept of criminal responsibility.

The Impact of Defendant Gender and Relationship to Victim on Juror Decisions in a Child Sexual Abuse Case

“…Maier‐Katkin (1991) reported that in actual cases of infanticide committed by mothers, half of the verdicts were not‐guilty by reason of insanity. Maier‐Katkin's findings suggest that, in some cases, mothers may not be held fully accountable for crimes against their own children because this behavior, on the part of a mother, is seen as indicative of insanity.…”

Parental Child Murder and Child Abuse in Anglo-American Legal System

“…Functioning as the realms of norm affirmation and symbolic boundary making (Durkheim, 1960;Erikson, 1966), the criminal courts are not mechanisms for real solutions to social problems such as crimes against children. Those who believe that aggressive identification and prosecution of parental violence against children provides deterrence to these acts, misjudge the issue for several important reasons: first, the deterrence model presumes a ''rational'' actor (Wilson, 2005) while a great majority of parental offenses against children are irrational, highly emotional acts precipitated by extreme stresses of various kinds (ibid; see also Maier-Katkin, 1991;Maier-Katkin & Ogle, 1993;Mann, 1996;Margolin, 1990Margolin, , 1992Ogle, Maier-Katkin, & Bernard, 1996;Wheelwright, 2002). Second, as some researchers on the subject claim (Ashe, 1997;Pelton, 1998), the perceptions of ''draconian'' character and biases in child protection deter even those parents who do not abuse their children from seeking help for them in cases of accidental injuries.…”

“…The subject of why the United States did not adopt a comparable statute deserves a separate paper, suffice it to say that through the years there have been forceful and compelling arguments for the adoption of laws separating infanticide from other homicides. Nevertheless, infanticide, including neonaticide and homicide of children older than 1 year, is treated in the Unites States in an ad hoc fashion and an outcome of the case depends on the states' laws and biases of the judges and juries (Maier-Katkin, 1991;Maier-Katkin & Ogle, 1993;Meyer & Oberman, 2001;Oberman, 1996). 3.…”

Patriarchy? Paternalism? Motherhood Discourses in Trials of Crimes against Children

“…The statutes are viable only as applied to mothers (not fathers or other relatives) and commonly only during the first twelve months of an infant's life. In the United States, comparable statutes have never been developed, although through the years there have been forceful and well-supported arguments for the adoption of laws separating maternal infanticides from other homicides (Denno 2003;Maier-Katkin 1991;Maier-Katkin and Ogle 1993;Meyer and Oberman 2001;Oberman 1996;Spinelli 2003). Infanticide, including neonaticide and homicide of children older than one year old, is treated in an ad hoc fashion, and outcomes depend on the state's laws as well as on the biases of the judges and juries.…”