‘She decided to kill her sons first and then commit suicide, because in her mind, leaving the children with their father or extended family would mean they wouldn’t be adequately cared for.’Īs a nurse, Fitchett was able to obtain benzodiazepine sleeping pills to drug both her children. ‘Fitchett is a mother who killed her sons in 2005, having decided that she was going to commit suicide because she felt that she could no longer continue living,’ says Wondemaghan. The criminologist uses the case of Donna Fitchett to explore how depression influences guilt through the eyes of the law. In her paper Depressed but not legally impaired Wondemaghan explores this distinction between psychotic disorders and symptoms of depression, and examines how these illnesses are viewed differently in the legal system- despite the fact that both are known to cause mental impairment. ![]() ‘I was always interested in why we tend to associate mental disorders to extreme cases of violence and why we tend to explain them in disorders of the mind, rather than perhaps disorders of character,’ says Meron Wondemaghan, a criminologist based in London with a research interest in how mental disorders can be used to mitigate culpability. In Australia, the law of ‘mental impairment’ broadly states that to establish a defence on the grounds of insanity, it must be clearly proven that at the time of committing the act, the accused’s state of mind meant that they did not know what they were doing, or if they did, that it was wrong. Though Freeman’s argument was unsuccessful, the case raised an interesting question: how could a completely sane person possibly throw their child off a bridge?Īt the same time, publicity also elevated the public’s demand for justice-the idea of somehow excusing Freeman because he may have been depressed was not well received by the public or the courts. From a legal perspective, it doesn't seem to meet the legal test for mental impairment.A substantial part of Freeman’s defence was that he was mentally ill at the time of the offense, but his plea was not accepted and he was sentenced to life in prison with a 32 year minimum sentence period. From a psychiatric perspective, depression can be a debilitating condition and it can lead to disorganisation of thought and irrational thinking.
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