@@geoffoldread7684 I'm glad that Megan could guest star in the Law & Order universe. She's a very distinguished actress. I once almost took an acting course that she was going to teach. I'm sure that it would have been most interesting.
I recently had my tiny senior chihuahua euthanized. I was pretty certain it was time. But he had depended on and trusted me to protect and care for him for the last 11 years since we rescued him. He was only about 16 but it became more and more difficult to care for him, he kept me up or awakened me multiple times, was incontinent and I was so sleep deprived. He needed to be hand fed and became so restless as well as almost totally blind and deaf. It became more and more difficult to comfort him and my other rescues were upset that he got most of my attention. It was so hard to have him euthanized! I had never in 75 years experienced anyone need me like that. He wasn’t happy unless I was holding him or he was asleep. Watching this brought a fresh cascade of grief, guilt and tears. Her acting was amazing and reached feelings it is easy to bury. I am crying now wishing so much I could again hold my tiny little man and somehow let him know how much I loved him. 😭
I became sleep deprived caring for my parents when they had Alzheimer’s. Even after they went into a nursing home, there was so much to do as the only relative. They frequently fell and went to the ER. I received phone calls from the nursing home all hours of the night. It is hell to have loved ones so sick and dependent, but much of that is due to the depression from knowing that they’re terminal.
Similar situation here. It is so hard to watch the ones you love suffer and know everything you are doing isn't stopping it, just keeping worse things from happening.
Isn'nt the mother lying a little bit? A kid doesn't die from convulsions. and she said she didn't give him the injection to let him die. Maybe medically ignoant.
"Parental exhaustion imminent." Got that diagnose almost four years ago. Still going. I feel so very sorry for the mother. One of the symptomes of parental burnout is the loss of emotions and detachment. So her doing this is absolutely possible.
This is one of those where I just can’t get behind the verdict. Even if I were to believe everything she said, the fact is that she continuously tried to cover it up afterwards. Memory suppression or no, she was stable enough to set the fire, get out, form a narrative of what happened & stick w/ it until exposed.
She got let off because the jury felt sorry for her. She had a son who pretty much qualified as evil and she felt trapped. So they let her off because the insanity plea gave her an out.
the charge was 2nd degree murder, which means "Intentional Killings Without Premeditation"...due to temporary insanity; basically they couldnt find enough evidence to assure she thought of the crime(like a life insurance, calls, covering tracks, etc)... the jury is only to decide on the charge given, not in anything else... the DA could have piled a ton more charges and found her guilty of arson, etc
@@justinchristoph3725 They "didn't let her off". Not guilty by reason of insanity means an indefinite stay in a psychiatric facility. She will be held until it's deemed that she's not a risk to herself or others, and in some cases that means forever.
I love when shows and movies tackle moral questions and grey areas. The acting was phenomenal and you could see yourself falling on either side of the verdict. Personally I find it very easy to believe that a jury would go not guilty by reason of insanity.
Someone who is consistently sleep deprived can go crazy. That's a fact. Anyone who has ever had a baby knows that it's enough to drive anyone insane being up all night. Twelve years of not sleeping more than two hours at a time? Sorry but that should be considered a psychiatric factor. This woman is going to live the rest of her life with the guilt of what she did. What would be the point of imprisoning someone who drove themselves to the edge to take care of such a child? The circumstances are so extenuating that I genuinely think the jury did the right thing.
As someone who has had insomnia for over 20 years. Being chroniclly sleep deprived is awful. I have ADHD and ASD. Being sleep deprived makes it worse for me.
As soon as they called her “Megan” I realized it was Megan Follows! Loved her as Ann Shirley - great to see her put in such a powerhouse performance here!
“Ann… with an ‘e’!” 😉 My thought was ‘Anne Shirley! What would Marilla and Matthew have thought about this? … and Mrs. Lynde will have a field day with this gossip.’ Also, Megan is such an awesome actress.
Most recently, I recognized Megan Fellows for her time playing Lily Borden on heartland. Heartland is another excellent series and more cast members from that show if they haven't already should appear on law and order.
I used to live with an autistic brother; what she's saying about respite care and sending him back is legit. They legally can't do anything to discipline one of their charges if they act out, and if they get too worked up, they can throw their hands up and send them home to you on the grounds they'd endanger themselves and everyone else.
12 years of doing her best to care for her son, how many years of sleep deprivation? I would not vote to convict, I would want her to get help for the guilt she's going to live with the rest of her life. My gawd, what an amazing performance from the actress. I was spellbound.
@jeromemaida4933 - no, I agree with the original poster. What good will that do for her daughter. This way maybe she can start healing getting better and being there for her other child.
McCoy should have listened to his boss, she was right on the money that the jury was going to find her not guilty. This was one of few shows where McCoy lost trial.
In a U.S. jury trial (not a “bench trial” before a judge without any jury), it depends on your location - especially which state and the kind of trial court - civil, criminal, appeals. If there’s a jury, the judge will read the verdict to himself/herself to make sure that the jury hasn’t made mistakes in the law. Then the judge will sometimes (not often) read the verdict aloud, but usually hands it to the Clerk of the Court (who’s sitting near the judge) or to the foreperson of the jury to read out loud.
I can relate to this mother. Big time. My son is almost 31. He has diagnoses of Level 2 ASD (with PDA characteristics), GAD, Binge Eating Disorder, Severe Food Addiction, & Type 2 Diabetes. I've spent my entire life fighting either for him or with him. I have cPTSD as a direct result of this. My fighting for him will not cease - I have to fight continually to get sufficient support funding to build sufficient capacity that will avoid him having to be handed over to Public Trust and Adult Guardian for management of his affairs. Because as things stand currently - if I'm not in the picture to make the decisions and carry on fighting on his behalf - nobody else is available from within the family. This I know to be a retrograde action on my part - he will not cope well under such structures. But as things stand moving into the future there will be an ongoing need for Financial Administration & Guardianship to protect him from himself. Along the way I have been subjected to psychological abuse - from him AND service providers. Like the support agency who took EIGHT days to inform me of a policy around imposition of restricted practices. Like another support agency with whom I had to jump up & down & shriek like a banshee just to be able to talk with them about an issue that had arisen, an action I had to repeat ONE month later. This agency didn't have the courage to contact me to drop me as a client, they called the person that put me onto them to have that person do it. Another agency that was fully briefed around my expectations from the outset that did similar - not communicating with me within a time frame SPECIFIED BY THEM - then dropped me when I complained. Then we have government. The public housing authority who refused to evict his downstairs neighbour after TWO PHYSICAL assaults - one of which could've entailed my son being pulled or falling backwards onto a concrete stairwell. This same neighbour was the subject of 34 PAGES of email complaints by a 2nd neighbour in relation to noise issues and several complaints from the family of a 3rd neighbour! The housing authority was prepared to move my son rather than evict this bad seed. Like this mum - I'm tired. Like this mum - I keep going. Because this is my son & I want the best for him. He CAN be worked with - I've just had to find the right professionals to do so. Which is also exhausting. I recently went thru some challenging times. I was suicidal - I'm not now. I got thru it by having my son move in with me - even tho it was rough, it was still better for me than living alone. We need better designed systems than we have. We need to acknowledge the role of family based carers much more than we do.
@PikaPetey ask ANY mum of a child with disability that question. They'll tell you no. Sometimes disability isn't obvious at birth. It can take a few years to show. Other times you pick up disability quickly - like vision and hearing impairment. We actually first thought there may've been hearing impairment when he approx 6-8 months old - large wooden spoon on bottom of metal pot. Older boy (by 19 mnths) would've startled, this one no reaction. But we want the same thing for ALL our kids, irrespective of disability or not - a fulfilling life lived in community. Which my older son has - employment, an intimate partner relationship with a significant other, a family, loads of friends. My younger son - well, he doesn't have ANY of those things. He has precisely TWO people in his life who are not either family or paid to be with him. In the 70's governments all over the world closed down institutions (where, admittedly, there was significant abuse of residents occurring) in favour of care in the community. A noble goal indeed. Except the community (meaning you) doesn't care about people with disability. Or aged people. Or those who provide care for them - like me. The right sees us as being "unproductive units" - my son now has 3 support workers, a psychologist, OT, dietician and an exercise physiologist who work with him. So I don't think "unproductive" is an accurate description, do you? Which brings us to the other issue the right has - the fact that such services are entirely taxpayer funded. But given he is incapable of full time work due to his disability, how else can he afford such services. Then we have the left, who aren't much better. The important thing for the left is the concept of intersectional identities. But they've never bothered to fully look at Crenshaw's model of intersectional identities - because if they did they'd see disability, mental health, aging AND caring ALL feature as parts of our identities.
As an autistic person, I have a really hard time sympathizing with people who kill their mentally disabled relatives, especially if it's children. So if either of my parents get too fed up with me they can just kill me and get away with it? Because I'm such a burden? What??
You say that because you are functional. You have no idea what is to care for someone who is not mentally capable of doing ANYTHING by themselves. There is a point where the little hope you had for them to be capable of taking caring of themselves fades away, leaving you with the cruel reality. The no Sleep stress, the broken things, the scars, everyhing end with you wishing for them to die peacefully.
She'd already been punished enough now living with the fact her child is dead because she succumbed to a moment of weakness. But given the behavior of the kid in question and how difficult he was to handle I could not blame her.
It can be, but definitely not always. With fires it can be as simple as CO inhalation. If you're asleep you never even know it's happening. Sounds like that's what happened to the kid.
Really? You think trimming to scape consequences is worse than killing someone? You probably think that making fun of someone is worse than breaking a bone too.
he was written out of show to accommodate Hill's 78 yr old retirement. It was written leaving the DA's office to accept a role in coordinating commemorations of the Holocaust Project
Before hung through with pregnancy people should be told about the possibilities of everything their child could have this can be completely avoided with better education in disabilities mental and physical
Thing is, no one would have children anymore. Same thing with telling women what is going to happen during birth and what things could and routinely go wrong during it! If you become aware of this before your family planning the chances are VERY high that normal people you would want to have children wouldn’t have as many or none at all. While people who don’t care or who routinely "accidentally" pop them out would be the majority of parents… Not beneficial for society.
@@lenibeni7421 You should realize that you preach ignorance. Even more, you preach coercion by omittance of truth. "Women should make children without knowing the risks!" - says you. And you hide that behind "benefit to society". Repulsive.
Like what? She tried dropping him off at the various shelters and homes for people like him for weekends and they would call her to get him inside a day. Also remember this takes place in the 90's when such help was not always so readily apparent and harder to find.
Institutions have closed or drastically downsized. Group homes may or may not be able to care for those with violent or destructive behaviors so we are left with family or a jail cell? What sense does that make?
If she's found to be mentally deficient, what happens to her daughter? I feel for the mom. Living for 12 years with a child with those challenges? I've been sleep-deprived for a couple of days and I near went nuts. After all that time, I'm amazed she didn't kill herself sooner.
Every parent should always look after & do anything to support their child regardless of how medically unstable or not they we are I fear what she would do to her other child it won't matter if she has medical Conditions or just a regular everyday child with no issues unless she gets the help of dealing with her problems & not making the same mistake to her remaining child like she did with her decreased one.
As an autistic person, no. Some parents should allow children to go into a higher degree of care if that’s what they need. It’s awful and traumatic, but it’s ultimately better than allowing yourself to get caught up in this belief system that we are better off dead
@@scriptorpaulina That kind of care is not always available, or affordable for that matter, and please remember to keep in mind this takes place in the 90's where such places were nearly non-existent. I mean she exhausted her options, NO ONE was taking this kid.
@@glennwatson3313 Who cares? There are a million better solutions to a child with special needs than murder. Or are you of the opinion that children with special needs deserve to be murdered because they cause parents additional stress? Smh
As a parent of a developmentally disabled adult child I can understand the exhaustion, frustration this type of situation can cause. But I could never understand killing my child to get out of lifelong caregiving.
Now my recollection of statutes are rusty, but is it not true, that if anyone is killed during the commission of a crime, they can be charged for those murders? So they have her for the arson, cut and dry, dead to rights, and her son was killed in the fire. Ergo, though they can’t get the case for the murder, come in the side door, from arson.
Just drop the kid off at the firehouse. Several places have the gold colored sign that has a silhouette that looks like a hug with iirc a phrase that says “safe place.” Just drop them off and surrender them to the state. It will be humiliating, but if you just can’t handle it I’m sure giving the kid up rather then killing them is definitely the move.
Safe Haven laws. All 50 states have them but there are age limits. In New York the child has to be under 5 days old. Fourteen states have a limit of 3 days old; 27 states have an age limit of less than 14 days. North Dakota and Missouri accept children up to one year old. Nebraska has the least restrictive, accepting children until the age of 18 years.
@@MonicaLNSome quality info here folks. I’m sure though (if given the circumstances) if you show up to a fire station and say “you need to help me, I absolutely can not do this and I need someone to help” Someone, somehow would get you help. It would at least get the ball rolling
she chose to let him seize and potentially die before starting the fire so in that time she could’ve helped him, changed her mind about the fire, carried him outside, but she left him to die intentionally like just because he was hard to handle that doesn’t mean she was justified or not guilty of murder here. what if you have kids with bpd? a kid with a drug addiction? if you become emotionally distraught and can’t take them anymore should you just be given a slap on the wrist because you’re crying? you can’t really set a precedent like this because it promotes child abuse and eugenics as long as the parent seems to feel bad enough and exhausted enough
That's a little different because those examples are situational and they don't have to depend on you. What happened here was the kid had no chance of getting better and had to be cared for 24/7n he was never going to be independent or had a chance if lining nornally.
I understand this character fatigue . Taking care of someone who is dependent on you can take a physical and emotional tole on you, hell you might even go full insane. But it still doent excuse her actions.
From what I remember the daughter wasn’t neurodivergent or disabled. So I’m willing to bet mom wouldn’t feel driven to cold blooded murder with her. Thinking of her daughter was the only reason it didn’t become a murder suicide. And it’s not a stretch from real life. In a notorious documentary by Autism Speaks (supposedly an advocate for Autistic families but spend their funds fearmongering and advocating dangerous treatments and eugenics) they interview a woman who said she fantasized about driving her disabled daughter off a bridge, but that the only thing that stopped her was her precious normal son she’d leave behind. Many disabled children are abused and murdered by their caregivers every single day for being a burden and supposed ally’s for the disabled normalized it as an acceptable way to look at a mentally and/or physically disabled child.
'Not guilty by reason of insanity' is different from 'not guilty'. She's not going home, she's going to a psych ward where they will keep her until they decide she is no longer a risk to herself or others. In some cases people are held until their death.
They did address that; she was afraid of what would happen to him in the system, which is a valid concern- psychiatric systems have some really nasty horror stories attached to them, especially in situations where patients are unable to represent their own interests. Also, letting go of the child you raised isn't that easy for most parents, and making them a ward of the state means you may even lose the right to visitation. So even if it's in everyone's best interests... it's not that simple.
11:30 Literally admitting that the purpose of the justice system isn't to do what's best, but to follow arbitrary rules. The guy says he thinks the penalty is too severe, and that they shouldn't charge her; that this woman is tortured and mentally scarred. And then his boss says he has to put her in prison anyway. On the same logic though, mental institutions are hell. People who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are sent to institutions that contain some of the most mentally ill and desperate people in the world. These institutions are not nice places; they are full of screaming, wailing, self injuring, tortured souls. Anyone who thinks that being declared insane is "getting away with murder" is a fool. If anything, it's an even worse sentence than prison could ever be.
Yes, Jaime , that is Megan follows a.k.a. Anna Green Gable’s!! look at her wow.. I knew I knew that voice and I knew that face somewhere before from a time ago ANN with an E
Sin and insanity Sin leads to wrong paths and insanity isn't knowing the right action to take. Interesting delma for the courts. Overall as every philosophy says bad actions lead to bad results. Her trail with her son after seeking everything she could do, broke her into insanity
The problem in here is humans don't adhere to their promise. Love and care, in sickness and in health. The parents of the special child is going to divorce. Sadly, the child is the victim of exhausted family that is not true and strong. I have an autistic brother here in the Philippines and my parents stayed until my dad's passing and we are still a strong family for my brother sake, because of our love as a family.
Yeah, she can cry as much as she wants: she murdered someone with disabilities, took advantage of her control over his life. Death penalty should have been attached, in a perfect world.
Respectfully, it's not black and white. She mentioned she sent him on the weekends but they could not take care of him. She had to make do with what she had and choose the lesser evil. What she did is still wrong point blank, but unless someone has gone through the experience of having a severely compromised child-this isn't one of those experiences in life where you get to say what should've been done or decide for someone else whether or not they're good or bad. It's like throwing stones from a glass house.
This would have been and open and shut case had the parent been the father. Women always expect the world to have sympathy for their gender from misconduct to heinous crime. What she did deserved nothing less than life.
Nah. This was a clear breakdown. If this was a father with a child in this state it would be understandable. Heinous but understandable. Especially now that people see euthanasia as a viable solution for human suffering.
