What would happen if you stabbed your children to death, pleaded "not guilty", and tried not to pay for their funeral costs?

Redacted by me.

Dunno, but I can tell you once a local trial here is over. With the exception of the funeral costs (to my knowledge), almost this same thing happened here recently.

A man stabbed to death his girlfriend’s six year old daughter here recently, he is pleading not guilty and has come out as saying that “Jesus told him to do it” so I can only assume he’s planning an insanity plea. I’ll let you know how things turn out (if I think of it then, I believe these things can take months or even years). :\

Um, what? Seriously.

Why on earth do you want to know the answer to these questions? I don’t even know where to begin…

@flo, are you trying to find out comparatively how such a crime would be punished in different areas or countries (assuming the suspect is found guilty)? If so, I think some clarification is needed so it doesn’t sound like you’re interested in committing a crime.

As for this:
4)When the victims are the guilty parties
I don’t understand it at all. In what kind of crime is a victim ever the guilty party? The victim is the victim.

^Also, that.

Was this on the news, dear, or are you having bad dreams again?

I sure wouldn’t be on Fluther anymore.

1) I would think the part about the funeral costs would be completely irrelevant – you’d be charged with murder and sent to prison for killing your kids.

2) yes. In the UK this plea is called “diminished responsibility”.

3) see above

4) wut? I don’t even understand this, how can a victim be a guilty party? Suicide?

Everyone,
I assumed it would make the news over the world, considering how much of a horrorifing, nightmarish story (like Andrea Yates or Susan Smith et al) is. Added: I was wrong.
Here is the story.
@Jeruba ”are you trying to find out comparatively how such a crime would be punished..” that is it exactly.

-I tried to find out the detail about the funeral cost I haven’t found it yet.
-Oops re, the word “guilty” I was thinking the Turcotte finds his wife “guilty” of cheating on him, and he punishes her by taking their childen’s life. What is the word that should replace the “guilty”?
Also, what would keep from pleading guitly, even if he claims to have been insane while he was commiting it. I mean isn’t that adding insult to injury? If the 2 children lost their lives why can’t he take a life sentence?
@downtide my instinct says not wanting to pay for the funeral has to have some relevance to something, I mean it is not nothing is it?

@flo, thanks for clarifying. I don’t see how the matter of funeral costs enters into it at all. No one is required to have a funeral. If the family of the deceased decide to hold a service and/or bury the deceased, they bear the responsibility unless the deceased has made his or her own provisions for it. Doesn’t this question seem like a side issue?

If a person dies and her family decides not to hold a funeral because they can’t afford to pay for it, does that make them guilty of something?

“Crime of passion” refers to the perpetrator’s state of mind. It doesn’t presume any action or state of culpability on the part of the victim. Suppose a man were obsessed with a woman who literally didn’t even know he existed. Finally he approaches her and she turns away and won’t speak to him, and something rises up in him and he just kills her on sudden impulse. That might be considered a crime of passion, but it would have nothing to do with her actions of guilt or innocence, only with his.

@Jeruba my main question is shouldn’t a parent who killed his chidren plead guilty, period? It is one thing to kill his innocent kids, (46 stabbings between the 2 kids) but to not want to suffer for it, seems insult to injury. The fact that he pleading not pleading guilty has to make a difference as to whether he finds it justifiable thing to do, and whether he would do it again. And that it is a calculated thing he did according to some.

I think we are missing each other re. It doesn’t presume any action or state of culpability on the part of the victim. it is the word guilty” that is causing the problem. what is the word I should have used instead of “guilty” I didn’t mean they were guilty.

@flo, anyone who commits a crime “should” admit guilt. That doesn’t mean they will. We have trials to find out what really happened and to punish the offenders, whether or not they have lied about their responsibility. Obviously someone who would stab two small children isn’t doing what he “should” do in the first place. I don’t see the sense in asking what a person should do who has clearly abandoned conventional morality.

I can’t tell you what word you should have used because it isn’t clear to me what you want to say. A person can be guilty of something without being guilty of a crime. It’s the law that makes it a crime. There’s no law against falling out of love with your husband and seeking another partner. When you say “guilty parties,” it sounds like you are talking about a crime. If you’re focusing on the subjective state of the murderer, he may well think that other people are guilty of something, and his action may well be a crime of passion.

@Jeruba thanks. “According to him, his wife is….of cheating on him.” What is the ideal word? Added: Forget this story, and this OP completely for now.

Guilty.

@Jeruba But that is the word that caused the miscommunication no? I was not thinking that the law sees her as guilty, and/or takes her guilt into account that into account or anything like that, and yet that is the message I sent by using the “guilty”.

In the meantime let me post:
Here
Here
here

@flo, you changed the terms with the wording “According to him.” That qualifier wasn’t in your original question.

As I’ve tried to say a couple of times, the difference is in whose point of view you are describing: the perpetrator’s, the victim’s, the jury’s, the public’s, the law’s?

I don’t think I can add anything more here.

Thanks for trying @Jeruba . I understand.

By the way, I was thinking of it the same way as the parole board. The board decides to let you out if you see the gravity of your crime, and keep you in if you don’t.