Texas A&M University School of Law Texas A&M Law Scholarship

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1-2004

[N]ot a Story to Pass On: Constructing Mothers Who Kill

Susan Ayres Texas A&M University School of Law, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Susan Ayres, [N]ot a Story to Pass On: Constructing Mothers Who Kill, 15 Hastings Women's L.J. 39 (2004). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/102

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Texas A&M Law Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Texas A&M Law Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "[N]ot a story to pass on"' : Constructing Mothers Who Kill

Susan Ayres*

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

- Toni Morrison2

Two days before Mother's Day, on May 9, 2003 Deanna LaJune Laney bashed in the brains of her two young sons, and caused serious injuries to her toddler.3 She called 911 and told the dispatcher that she "had to" kill her children because "God had told her to.' 4 Her neighbors and friends were incredulous because they considered Laney "a wonderful mom," and a "devout Christian woman who schooled her children and seemed absorbed in their lives."5 Our impulse on hearing about Laney's "is that someone just can't be in their right mind to have done something like this."'6 And yet instances of may be shockingly more common than we expect. Some studies find that "nearly one infant is killed every day" in the United

" Associate Professor, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. B.A. Baylor University, 1982; M.A., University of Texas at San Antonio, 1985: J.D., Baylor University School of Law 1988; Ph.D., Texas Christian University, 1997. Thanks to Marie Ashe, Cynthia Fountaine, Jason Gillmer, and Earl Martin, Jr., for thoughtful comments. I am also grateful to Anna Teller for indispensable library and research assistance. Natalie Voss and David Clem also provided excellent research assistance. I am particularly indebted to Texas Wesleyan University School of Law for financial support of this project. 1. , 274-75 (1987). 2. Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture 1993 in TONI MORRISON: CRITICAL AND THEORETICAL APPROACHES 271 (Nancy Peterson ed., 1997). 3. Anne Belli Gesalman, Andrea Yates Redux, NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE, May 17, 2003, availableat 2003 WL 11863494. 4. Id. 5. Id. 6. Live (CNN television broadcast, May 12, 2003), available at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/12/wbr.00.html.

HASTINGS WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL HASTINGS WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 15:1

States; however, due to problematic reporting and ascertainment of the cause of , the number of may be "double that number."7 Nevertheless, we label a mother who kills her children - especially a mother like Laney, who seems to be a terrific mom - as "other," as different and as crazy. We fail to view her actions with "other ," to listen to her as a speaking subject. Incidents of infanticide such as the Laney story fill us with horror - they are stories not to be passed on, to paraphrase Toni Morrison.8 And yet they are stories that insidiously lodge themselves in our collective consciousness.9 Our responses to infanticide and our attempts to understand infanticide are intertwined with ou