The mother during her court appearance
The mother pleaded her suffering from a mental disorder.. but the New Zealand court convicted her of all the charges against her
Posted on: August 16, 2023: 03:20 PM GST Last updated: August 16, 2023: 03:38 PM GST
A New Zealand court on Wednesday found a woman guilty of killing her three daughters, at the end of a month-long trial.
Lorne Dickson is accused of strangling her twins, Maya and Carla, 2, and her oldest daughter, Leanne, 6, while her husband was having dinner out with his colleagues, according to local media reports.
family before the tragedy
Dickson confessed to killing the girls, but said that she did so because of a mental disorder and in the context of what is known as “infant killing.”
Under New Zealand law, infanticide is a defense for a mother who causes the death of a child when she is “mentally disturbed at the time of the offence”.
The girls were killed inside their home in Timaru, in the South Island, shortly after the family arrived in New Zealand from South Africa.
The three victims
A jury at Christchurch High Court found Dickason guilty of all counts of murder. Dickson’s defense attorney appeared shocked at the verdict.
In New Zealand, murder is punishable by a minimum of 10 years in prison.
After the verdict was issued, Detective Scott Anderson said in a statement that the police expressed their “sympathies with the families who will not see Leanne, Maya and Carla grow up.”
The mother during her court appearance
“Words cannot express the tragic circumstances of this investigation,” he added.
During the trial, the prosecution and defense attorneys agreed that Dickason was mentally ill when she killed her daughters.
But they disagreed about whether her state of mind was so bad that she was unaware of what she was doing.
In court, District Attorney Andrew McCrae told the jury that anger drove Dickason to kill her daughters.
But Dickson’s defense attorney, Keren Beaton, confirmed that the killing of the girls was not the result of anger and resentment, but rather that it occurred because Dickson suffered from “a severe mental illness.”
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2023-08-16 11:20:00
