The Texas women killed her kids one by one by drowning them in the bathtub. This took some time I would think. From a news story, I also understand that her oldest son, the last to die, put up a struggle. Maybe the first one was kind of "spontaneous" but the next four would certainly seem to be friggin premeditated to me... Could be wrong...

I don't know if the Smith women set off on her drive to do her deed or if she sort of had a "gestalt" while she was at the lake and improvised... The antics she pulled after she killed her kids with the media would imply to me that she may have been even more insane than the Texas women. I may have forgotten some of the facts though.

Your contention that a psychiatrist in court is going to shed some kind of new light on this women is also a bit laughable to me. She "suffered" from post partum depression, she had no choice but to kill her kids... FWIW, I never bought into that "don't rush to judgement" bullshit either. I give the presumption of innocence to those who haven't confessed, but I still think that from a strictly rational point of view, anyone who kills is at least temporalily insane (again barring self defense, protection of family and war).

For clarification, I would like to state that I believe that laws exist to keep us from doing what we otherwise would do naturally. "I like your shirt, I'm gonna take it", "I like your wife, etc...", "I don't like you, life would be easier for me if I made you cease to exist"... This is about the rights of the children that she deprived. She served as a selfish judge, jury and executioner in her own world - whether sane or not.

Killing her will not do anything to right her wrong. The kids will still be dead and deprived of all of their most basic rights. It is my contention that the State should act in their behalf and in some way even it up for them... Texas should drown her in a bathtub on prime time. At least then, she may know how they felt.