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American Morning
Children Killed by Texas Mother
Aired May 13, 2003 - 07:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now for the latest on Deanna LaJune Laney. She is the Texas woman accused of killing two of her sons. She is being held on $3 million bail.
Laney's 8-year-old and 6-year-old sons were beaten to death, and her 14-month-old is critically injured. Police say she told them that God ordered her to do it.
The case is being compared to Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in the bathtub. Her husband, Russell Yates, spoke to Larry King last night, and Larry asked him what he thought when he first heard about Deanna Laney.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSSELL YATES, ANDREA YATES' HUSBAND: Well, my brother heard about it first, and he called me. And, you know, he commented to me how similar it seemed to our own. And I went and read about it, and, you know, really on the surface it really does.
I just feel so sorry for the family, you know. I mean, it's really hard for me to even hear, you know, to see -- you know, just to think about what the children went through and what, you know, the father is going through, how sick the mother is, how really, you know -- and how in some respects they've got a long way to go, because the -- you know, the media, you know, can be very cruel, as can the state.
I was really disappointed to hear that they issued a gag order in their case. You know, it's like the one time you need to be able to speak is the time when you think the state's proceeding wrongly against you, and it's really uncalled for. And I feel so sorry for that family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Well, some of Deanna Laney's friends and neighbors have described her as a good mother. They say that they're shocked that she has been charged in the killings of two of her sons.
Laney made a brief court appearance on Monday. Prosecutors say it's too early to determine whether this will be a death penalty case.
Lee Hancock is a reporter for "The Dallas Morning News." She was in the courtroom yesterday, and she's with us from Tyler, Texas, now.
Lee -- good morning.
LEE HANCOCK, REPORTER, "THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS": Good morning.
KAGAN: Anything more we're learning about what took place at that home, and anything you learned from the hearing?
HANCOCK: Well, in the hearing, Ms. Laney's lawyer took great pains to try to telegraph that this is going to be a case about her psychiatric condition. I mean, as he said, anybody who has any kind of dealings in the system would say that a question of competency and sanity would be among the first things that you would look at. He initially did not want Ms. Laney to even answer questions as to whether she understood her rights as they were being read by a judge.
This hearing was actually held because the judge had heard from the judge who gave Ms. Laney an initial hearing after her Saturday arrest that she appeared confused, that she appeared perhaps not to know fully what was going on. So, again, there is a suggestion that she's not mentally in a great understanding of what's going on.
A jailer over the weekend said that she is pacing in her cell, sometimes silent, sometimes singing gospel music, sometimes crying out, "Oh, God," "Oh, no," and then sometimes crawls into a fetal position. So this is obviously a woman in some great mental distress.
KAGAN: Well, the legal question at hand right now is if, in fact, prosecutors will go for the death penalty. Let's listen to some sound from one of the prosecutors right now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACK SKEEN, SMITH COUNTY, TEXAS DISTRICT ATTORNEY: At some point as we move forward in Texas, the decision of whether or not to seek the death penalty in the case is a decision that is made by the elected criminal district attorney.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: You also covered parts of the Andrea Yates trial. Do you think that they will go for the death penalty this time around?
HANCOCK: You know, the district attorney, Jack Skeen, obviously says it's early in the investigation. But this is a very conservative district attorney's office and a very conservative county. They have a number of people on death row from Smith County. This prosecutor talked yesterday about how he personally has sent more than a dozen people to death row.
And one of his former associates told me yesterday that although he will obviously look very carefully at all of the facts of this, he is not one to be swayed by comments that either God or the Devil made one do something like this. And many people who know Jack Skeen are saying that they would expect him to look very closely at going after the death penalty in this case.
KAGAN: And so that's the prosecutor. What about the jury pool that might come from this area? You saw with Andrea Yates they tried to build what would appear to be even a more convincing argument she had a long history of psychological problems. That does not appear to be the case here.
Would that kind of argument even have a chance in a courtroom where you are in Tyler, Texas?
HANCOCK: That's a good question here. I mean, and that's going to be the question that the defense is going to have to be exploring, you know, for some months to come.
The attorney in the case is a very experienced criminal defense lawyer, well-known in East Texas, Buck Files. One of his very first calls yesterday after being appointed to take this case was to Andrea Yates' lawyer, George Parnham, down in Houston. Mr. Parnham told me that they talked briefly about psychiatric experts, the psychiatric experts who evaluated Ms. Yates.
Obviously in this case that's going to be one of the first things that both sides probably are going to want to do, and there is going to be a flurry of motions about that on both sides. There probably will be a hearing, I would expect, possibly an examining trial on her competency. But it remains to be seen how much a jury here, again in a conservative community of about 85,000 people, a county of about 150,000 in East Texas, how much they will embrace that kind of argument.
KAGAN: Lee Hancock with "The Dallas Morning News," thank you very much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired May 13, 2003 - 07:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now for the latest on Deanna LaJune Laney. She is the Texas woman accused of killing two of her sons. She is being held on $3 million bail.
Laney's 8-year-old and 6-year-old sons were beaten to death, and her 14-month-old is critically injured. Police say she told them that God ordered her to do it.
The case is being compared to Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in the bathtub. Her husband, Russell Yates, spoke to Larry King last night, and Larry asked him what he thought when he first heard about Deanna Laney.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSSELL YATES, ANDREA YATES' HUSBAND: Well, my brother heard about it first, and he called me. And, you know, he commented to me how similar it seemed to our own. And I went and read about it, and, you know, really on the surface it really does.
I just feel so sorry for the family, you know. I mean, it's really hard for me to even hear, you know, to see -- you know, just to think about what the children went through and what, you know, the father is going through, how sick the mother is, how really, you know -- and how in some respects they've got a long way to go, because the -- you know, the media, you know, can be very cruel, as can the state.
I was really disappointed to hear that they issued a gag order in their case. You know, it's like the one time you need to be able to speak is the time when you think the state's proceeding wrongly against you, and it's really uncalled for. And I feel so sorry for that family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Well, some of Deanna Laney's friends and neighbors have described her as a good mother. They say that they're shocked that she has been charged in the killings of two of her sons.
Laney made a brief court appearance on Monday. Prosecutors say it's too early to determine whether this will be a death penalty case.
Lee Hancock is a reporter for "The Dallas Morning News." She was in the courtroom yesterday, and she's with us from Tyler, Texas, now.
Lee -- good morning.
LEE HANCOCK, REPORTER, "THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS": Good morning.
KAGAN: Anything more we're learning about what took place at that home, and anything you learned from the hearing?
HANCOCK: Well, in the hearing, Ms. Laney's lawyer took great pains to try to telegraph that this is going to be a case about her psychiatric condition. I mean, as he said, anybody who has any kind of dealings in the system would say that a question of competency and sanity would be among the first things that you would look at. He initially did not want Ms. Laney to even answer questions as to whether she understood her rights as they were being read by a judge.
This hearing was actually held because the judge had heard from the judge who gave Ms. Laney an initial hearing after her Saturday arrest that she appeared confused, that she appeared perhaps not to know fully what was going on. So, again, there is a suggestion that she's not mentally in a great understanding of what's going on.
A jailer over the weekend said that she is pacing in her cell, sometimes silent, sometimes singing gospel music, sometimes crying out, "Oh, God," "Oh, no," and then sometimes crawls into a fetal position. So this is obviously a woman in some great mental distress.
KAGAN: Well, the legal question at hand right now is if, in fact, prosecutors will go for the death penalty. Let's listen to some sound from one of the prosecutors right now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACK SKEEN, SMITH COUNTY, TEXAS DISTRICT ATTORNEY: At some point as we move forward in Texas, the decision of whether or not to seek the death penalty in the case is a decision that is made by the elected criminal district attorney.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: You also covered parts of the Andrea Yates trial. Do you think that they will go for the death penalty this time around?
HANCOCK: You know, the district attorney, Jack Skeen, obviously says it's early in the investigation. But this is a very conservative district attorney's office and a very conservative county. They have a number of people on death row from Smith County. This prosecutor talked yesterday about how he personally has sent more than a dozen people to death row.
And one of his former associates told me yesterday that although he will obviously look very carefully at all of the facts of this, he is not one to be swayed by comments that either God or the Devil made one do something like this. And many people who know Jack Skeen are saying that they would expect him to look very closely at going after the death penalty in this case.
KAGAN: And so that's the prosecutor. What about the jury pool that might come from this area? You saw with Andrea Yates they tried to build what would appear to be even a more convincing argument she had a long history of psychological problems. That does not appear to be the case here.
Would that kind of argument even have a chance in a courtroom where you are in Tyler, Texas?
HANCOCK: That's a good question here. I mean, and that's going to be the question that the defense is going to have to be exploring, you know, for some months to come.
The attorney in the case is a very experienced criminal defense lawyer, well-known in East Texas, Buck Files. One of his very first calls yesterday after being appointed to take this case was to Andrea Yates' lawyer, George Parnham, down in Houston. Mr. Parnham told me that they talked briefly about psychiatric experts, the psychiatric experts who evaluated Ms. Yates.
Obviously in this case that's going to be one of the first things that both sides probably are going to want to do, and there is going to be a flurry of motions about that on both sides. There probably will be a hearing, I would expect, possibly an examining trial on her competency. But it remains to be seen how much a jury here, again in a conservative community of about 85,000 people, a county of about 150,000 in East Texas, how much they will embrace that kind of argument.
KAGAN: Lee Hancock with "The Dallas Morning News," thank you very much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
