Though more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year, very few women enter the capital murder system, and fewer still are ever actually executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

DavidByron · 2013-07-25T16:27:21+00:00

This cannot be discussed unless we pretend it's really an issue of race. You can talk about black men getting shafted by the justice system, but not men in general.

phedre · 2013-07-25T18:31:18+00:00

Isn't there a particular defense for women who kill their children before a certain age? Some stress related charge?

iMADEthis2post · 2013-07-25T18:34:21+00:00

I can just see this popping up in SRS now with the title "/r/mensrights wan't more women killed."

I do often wonder why as a male I am reffered to as the privaleged class even though women have it so much easier in my society. In Britan we have a rule of law called infantacide which basically makes it legal for a mother to kill her child within the first year or two and have it excused from court. Now you could argue that there are medical reasons a mother may happen to kill her child but you can argue this about a lot of crimes, it's generally the female and not the male that walks away from a crime without real punishment. No such excuse exists for male parents of course.

Interestingly this comes down to the old world view hmm what do they call it again... patriachy theory or whatnot that the woman isn't in command of her own mind. Still it's funny you don't see any feminists fighting against a womans right to murder her child within the first few years of it's life. I'd respect them more if they gave as much as they took so the genders actually achieve an aspect of true equality. Sadly they just pick and chose what is best for them and when the rest of society brings up discrepencies like this which should have been a part of their movement they do their best to make us look like woman hating monsters.

avantvernacular · 2013-07-25T19:42:14+00:00

I am not for executing people for personal moral reasons.

I have no objection to life sentences, however, and a fail to see why infanticide would not be worth the charge.

King_Turnip · 2013-07-25T22:55:17+00:00

My google-fu is failing me. We have a stat presented here:

200 women in the US kill their own children.

I can find multiple citations of this (though not the original study.) I cannot, however, find a similar statistic for men. How many men kill their children in the US every year?

AtheistConservative · 2013-07-25T19:45:33+00:00

The fact that you can murder your child and not automatically get the death penalty is so fucked.

perfectsquared · 2013-07-26T01:51:56+00:00

This is misleading. Overall there are fewer capital sentences handed out to men and women for all crimes that warrant this punishment. It is way too costly for the system to keep sending people to the chair. They sit on death row for years and years while their case is appealed and their execution is postponed. It is much cheaper and easier to give a plea deal of life in prison.

Mrmojoman0 · 2013-07-25T18:52:12+00:00

the funny thing is, when it is a woman being murdered, there is more likely to be a death sentence than if a man is murdered.

same goes for black/white.

so not only is a black man FAR more likely to be executed if he killed a white man than a white woman would be,

if the black man killed a white woman, he is effectively screwed while a white woman who kills a black man would be damn near guaranteed to walk.

i may not remember 100% correctly, so here's my source

i'll have to give it a go through soon to make sure i'm not misquoting anything.

Edit: might be muddling some facts with this one too http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002

although all i remember clearly was the gendered aspect, as it was my focus at the time. in both instances there is clear bias against men.

saint2e · 2013-07-25T21:49:30+00:00

I would prefer no one gets the death penalty, regardless of their gender.

Super_delicious · 2013-07-25T18:52:02+00:00

As a mom I say those bitches need to rot in jail.

TheHatOnTheCat · 2013-07-25T23:55:29+00:00

The death penalty is not applied equally because it comes down to who juries and prosecutors find to be more threatening or sympathetic both in terms of the defendant and the victim. This means that an African American or man who is generally seen as scarier is more likely to get it.

Here is an article about "chivalric norms" in the application of the death penalty: Gender Bias and the Death Penalty(2011)

However, the case of mothers murdering their children is unique in other ways. Here is a literature review about maternal filicide.

Resnick's review of the world psychiatric literature on maternal filicide (11) found filicidal mothers to have frequent depression, psychosis, prior mental health treatment, and suicidal thoughts.

Personally I think mental health should be taken into consideration when putting someone to death. However, I also don't think the death penalty is a good or helpful idea in general.

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2013-07-26T13:45:19+00:00

If the death penalty were applied to women with the same vigor it's applied to men we would have banned it decades ago.

JLTeabag · 2013-07-26T16:38:29+00:00

In case you want actual statistics instead of unsubstantiated claims: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/women-and-death-penalty#facts http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

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