I'm not sure how this can legally be a first degree murder - killing someone in a fit of rage type situation is different than a premeditated murder. I would like a look at the MO statute, and it's been umpteen years since criminal law in college - are there any lawyers on the thread who could comment on this?
I probably have a different opinion than most here - I think these type of killings are more common than we might like to admit. This reminds me of the many more shaken baby cases we hear about, where a parent or care-giver snaps. I know there used to be commercials, sort of PSAs, about what to do when you are stressed as a parent. At the pediatricians, there are brochures about parent hotlines, and steps to take when you feel you are at the end of your rope (put baby in crib, shut door and go into another room or outside for a few mins, etc). Two of my kids were fairly difficult babies,and one had reflux so badly that she screamed nearly all day, would not eat well (and thus was always losing weight, and very often getting dehydrated), and it went on for months and months. There were many moments where I had to put her in the crib and walk away and shut the door,and more often than i like to admit, my thoughts were NOT GOOD. I thank god i had family nearby who would come daily to sit with the babies,tell me to get dressed and GET OUT for a while. Situations like that can cause any normal human being, yes, even a mother, quite a build up of stress, and even anger.
If we could be honest about this, I think there are times when all parents have reached that end of the rope feeling with a screaming child, even a baby. I think it is more common than we like to admit. We like to paint pictures of motherhood as all candy canes and rainbows, and we like to think that maternal/child bonding is so special that to have negative or even ambivalent feelings towards a baby is unnatural, but I think that sets up an u realistic set of expectations on mothers.
What I would love to see come out of cases like this is some type of program that I know many countries have, where a nurse does home visits with new moms for a certain period of time after having the baby. To watch the interaction, give advice, check up on both mom and baby. I realize that in this case, little Tyler was an older baby, and so this type of thing may not have helped prevent this, but maybe there were signs a experienced health care worker could have picked up on, and it could prevent other cases of a parent "losing it" and harming a child. Especially in cases where the parent is young, or the parent is single and young, as we have here.
None of this means I don't feel that the mom in this case should be punished. I do think she should, and i am glad she has confessed; that says to me that she probably feels genuine remorse for what she did. But I think we need to be realistic, also, and do what we can to avoid these situations. I don't think this was a mother who deliberately set out to kill her child, and I don't think she deserves a first degree murder charge, unless more info comes out to support that. We need more services, more information and support for parents, especially younger ones, not harsher setences and charges. That isn't going to help any other case in the future. Someone "losing it" in the heat of the moment isn't going to stop and say "oh wait, that other baby's mom got the death penalty, so I need to cool down now". They're not thinking calmly and rationally in that moment. However, if they're given the tools to avoid such a situation in the first place, well, then it never gets to that point where they've gone too far.
