SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A woman accused of killing her three young sons by tossing them into frigid San Francisco Bay believed God summoned her to sacrifice her children, her lawyer told a judge. “The voice of God called upon her to sacrifice her three children,” Teresa Caffese said at the woman’s preliminary hearing in San Francisco Superior Court.
Let me just start by stating for the record that I am damn sick and tired of the “I heard the voice of God and He told me to….” stories. That sentenced is usually finished with some unspeakably horrific act that the God I learned about in Sunday School would never sanction, even on His absolute worst day. Hearing the voice of God is not an excuse, it’s a reason, and if you are using “hearing the voice of God” to explain away:
- throwing your children off a bridge,
- cutting your girlfriend into pieces and feeding her to your goldfish,
- driving your Hummer down the sidewalk at 30 MPH at the farmer’s market,
- rooting for the Green Bay Packers,
or any other number of horrific, unspeakably distasteful and antisocial acts…knock it off. No one is going to buy it. Hearing the voice of the Almighty is one of the silliest, most overused excuses for murder and mayhem ever invented. It’s been done; find a new shtick….
(Cue the Nat King Cole clip: Unoriginal…that’s what your are….)
Lashaun Harris, 23, was arrested last October, shortly after authorities said she dropped her children, one by one, over a rail and into the bay.
Taronta Greeley Jr., 2, was buried. The bodies of Treyshun Harris, 6, and Joshoa Greeley, 16 months, were never recovered.
Harris, who faces three counts of murder, has pleaded not guilty. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with delusional thought disorder, Caffese said, and was hospitalized once because she said God was telling her to jump out a window.
“Why is the DA prosecuting a pathetically schizophrenic, poor, black woman?” Caffese said during a break in testimony. “She loved her kids.”
Uh, gee…let me think about this for a second…. Could it POSSIBLY have something to do with the fact that she murdered her three children by THROWING THEM OFF A BRIDGE?? Hmm??
Look, I don’t care if Harris heard the voice of God or was channelling Taylor Hicks at the time she tossed her kids off that bridge. She murdered her children. Period. End of story. What more is there to say?
At what point do we finally hold people responsible for the consequences of their actions? How about now??
