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The jury in the trial of Karen McCarron has issued a verdict of guilty on all counts, report’s today’s Peoria Journal-Star.
Here is the text of a press release issued by Paul McCarron.
Here are some posts by members of the autism community.
- Moi on McCarron, mental illness, and the penal system
- Ari Ne’eman, President of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, on phony ransom notes can have real consequences in Talking Justice
- For Katie, Never Forgotten is by Kassiane
- Niksmom Maternal Instincts writes that words cannot do justice and posts again after the verdict.
- Kev (it is very good to hear your voice) at Left Brain / Right Brain posts Dear Katie
- Liz at I Speak of Dreams posts, with sorrow and tears.
- SL at Stop. Think. Autism calls shame on the media (again) and dedicates this post to Katie.
29 Marbles references a post he wrote back in May of 2006 while we wait; this is his post after the verdict. - Ed posts a short video remembering Katie.
- Sharon at The Family Voyage posts about Katie.
- Rose at Hard Won Wisdom entitles her post AutismSpeaks: Katie McCarron’s Death.
- Whose Planet Is It Anyway? posts a poem remembering Katie.
- Mike Stanton at Action for Autism writes about a just verdict.
- Steve D at One Dad’s Opinion writes this post for Katie and her family.
- GFCF Mommy posts nothing’s going to change my world.
- Go to AspergerSquare8 to see a beautiful square garden (pink) .
- Andrea posts for children now gone.
- Maddy at Whitterer on Autism writes about Katie McCarron—-theft of joy.
- Alex at The Runman posts on Truth and Justice.
- Club 166 reminds us Primum non nocere.
- Kyra at This Mom on The Verdict.
- Gretchen‘s post is called empty-handed.
- Autismville posts for Katie McCarron
1499 days ago
[...] daughter, Katherine “Katie” McCarron, today’s Peoria Journal-Star reports. On January 17th, McCarron was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, one count of obstructing justice and [...]
Robin – by comparing the situation of injecting your children with a non-autism causing vaccine with the murder of katie you utterly trivialise what happened to her.
Shame on you.
To the McCarron family: my deepest condolences and my heartfelt wish that peace and joy return to your family.
To the jurors who wrote here: thank you for your thoughtful service.
@Robin, you wrote:
Just out of curiousity, I had a look at the sites that Google did turn up, when I searched the words ‘Karen McCarron’, immediately after I learned of her conviction. I clicked on all of the top links that came up, and I did a word search on each of the pages for the word ‘vaccine’. I did this for the top six or eight sites that came up, for both the Google news search, and the Google web search.
My post, Katie McCaron’s Murder is the #3 post that comes up; it was written on May 25, 2006, and is chiefly a timeline of events.
No conspiracy there: I had no reason to mention vaccination, mercury, or thimerosal in that post. I was going for factual, not speculative. Also, I don’t recall Karen McCarron’s claim of “guilt because I vaccinated her” argument being mentioned until the trial.
You will also note from that post that Mr. McCarron filed for divorce on May 25, 2006.
@Robin,
I’ve been following the McCarron case regularly since May of 2006 and have tried to post about new developments as they have occurred over the past year and a half. The recent trial received much more coverage in the media than the killing of Katie back in May of 2006; from my own reading around the Internet and communications with other families with autistic children, I got the sense that many people did not know about, or had forgotten about, this case.
I am well educated enough to understand that it is not socially acceptable, or legally acceptable either, to sneak up behind my playing preschooler and murder her with a plastic bag. Not that the thought of wanting to do such a thing has ever crossed my mind.
My husband used to occasionally suggest, when our own children were toddlers, that the nice thing about car seats, for toddlers, is that they’re the only socially acceptable way of tying them down. I can assure you he was joking. I can also assure you that he’d be just a tad bit nervous to know that anyone would suggest he might in any way think of abusing his children.
I am also educated enough, however, to understand that it apparently IS socially acceptable to inject someone else’s child with dangerous levels of neurotoxins. Levels that leave the child a mere shell of what he or she once was. It is then socially, (and legally too it seems) acceptable, in the US in 2008, to do everything within my power to shut up anyone who tries to speak of what I’ve done. It is socially acceptable to pay off anyone who helps me to cover up my crimes.
Robin, since you wrote that you have never seemed to understand what is socially acceptable to do, and what isn’t, let me help you out: it’s not socially acceptable to sneak up behind your playing preschooler and murder her with a plastic bag.
Hope that helps.
So, Robin, did any of your Google U courses tell you that Karen didn’t have anything to do with nearly 2 years of raising Katie?
Didn’t think so.
It wasn’t about vaccines. It wasn’t about being “alone”. It was about a selfish woman wanting the above average nothing out of the ordinary here life in middle America.
If you did a Google U study on KATIE McCarron (you know, the person involved who the media never talked about) you’d know that.
The public is losing faith in the media as well as the CDC.
I’ve had people tell me it’s not that odd, really, that ten days before her conviction was the first I’d heard of Karen McCarron. The pathologist who killed her three year old autistic daughter Katie by suffocating her with a plastic bag.
I’ve also had a person tell me (it was my husband as it happens) that it’s not really that odd that, on the day of her conviction, when I went to Google her name in order to find a particular Associated Press story I’d seen about her online a week earlier, I could no longer find that particular story. Not by doing a search—either a Google web search or a Google news search—on her name. No, I had to actually do a search on these words, which I cut directly out of the AP story of a week earlier
‘McCarron, a former pathologist, testified she felt responsible for Katie’s autism because she allowed the child to get vaccinated.’
to find that particular AP story via a Google search.
The story, which you can see here
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gzi4G83F97PxaZn6ctuLeZ9l5tkwD8U453JG0
also speaks of a videotaped confession which Karen made, sitting next to her husband from her hospital bed, where she’d been taken after a suicide attempt.
I read of this confession and I have to say that I felt a small stab of relief to hear that her husband, Paul, was sitting next to her, when she made the confession. I know that many women with autistic children face their ordeal alone, and I told myself how very nice that, finally, it seemed that some of the men seemed to be getting on board.
However when I learned of Karen’s conviction, a week later, I did some more reading about her, on the internet, and I learned some new things. I learned that her husband Paul is going to divorce her. I learned that she could face as much as forty to one hundred years in prison. (Well, says my husband, of course he’s going to divorce her. She’ll be spending the next few decades at least in prison, and she did murder his child.)
I wonder if Paul, who I have now learned is divorcing his wife, was sitting beside her when she testified about her belief that she was responsible for her child’s autism since it was she who took the child to be vaccinated.
Well, the whole story is really very sad, and it’s understandable I suppose that many wouldn’t want to speak of it, and I suppose there really isn’t anything left to say about it anyway.
Of course then I’ve always had this problem where I never really seem to understand just what is socially acceptable to do, and what isn’t. And so I keep on talking about it. At this point, one thing that I would like to know is this. Who is responsible for sentencing Karen? The judge, or the jury? I guess I would expect it would be the judge, simply because it’s the judge who so often determines which expert testimony is allowable in cases which involve a great deal of scientific controversy. I can’t understand why that is, really, but it’s what I have heard. What your typical judge knows about science that your average American doesn’t know is beyond me. But, as my husband said, somebody has to decide which expert testimony is admissible, and which isn’t. You’d think perhaps the defendant or the prosecutor might have a say. But I’m not a lawyer, and these things confuse me.
Just out of curiousity, I had a look at the sites that Google did turn up, when I searched the words ‘Karen McCarron’, immediately after I learned of her conviction. I clicked on all of the top links that came up, and I did a word search on each of the pages for the word ‘vaccine’. I did this for the top six or eight sites that came up, for both the Google news search, and the Google web search.
The word ‘vaccine’ did not show up on any of those sites, even once.
Sheesh, and just when I’d started telling myself that perhaps I’m too focused on thimerosal, and perhaps I should be thinking more about fish, or light bulbs, or aluminum, or bismuth or something.
My husband says he doesn’t find this at all odd. He doesn’t see this as a spin of omission. (He understands a great deal better than I do, he seems to think, how it is that sites get to the top of the Google search engines. While he didn’t do a very good job explaining it to me, I think that it is supposed to have something to do with which sites people look for and visit the most.) Oh well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, I guess. I find that I can’t help wondering, though, if the fact that some of the work he does at NASA, involving funds which come from people at the Cleveland Clinic, has some impact on his thoughts about this topic. I don’t know if this would have any affect on his views on this matter, or not. I like to think it wouldn’t. All I know is that the whole icky story and the whole icky outcome has put me in rather a funk.
Which I have to say I’m a bit afraid to speak of. Lest someone express the opinion that perhaps a Doctor could ‘fix’ me up, with just the proper drug.
Robin Nemeth
I can’t thank you enough for writing all this here—yes, Katie will be remembered as beautiful, precious, and happy, and by many, many, many people. Many.
1572 days ago
[...] father Paul McCarron made this statement in a press release issued [...]
I would like to thank RH and the other jurors. I do agree with the decision they reached.
Just a quick explanation for those who may not be familiar with Illinois law. Under Illinois law, the jury basically had 3 issues to resolve.
1) Did the state prove beyond reasonable doubt that Karen knowingly killed Katie? Here there was no doubt. Karen actually demonstrated how she killed Katie to the jury.
2) Having said yes above then the Jury had to decide if the defendant proved by “clear and convincing” evidence that Karen was “insane” at the time of the murder. Under IL law “insane”, more or less, meant that she could not appreciate the criminality of her actions. Here they found the defendant did not prove this. If they had they would have entered a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
3) Having found that defendant did not reach that burden they then had to address whether Karen was “guilty but mentally ill.” Here Karen had the burden to prove by a preponderance of evidence (more likely than not) that she had a mental condition and that it somehow contributed to her committing the crime. (I’m not giving the exact wording but just trying to give the crux of it.) Here the State pretty much conceded she had depression but they did not concede that her depression contributed to her committing the crime. The jury, I think rightly, found that the defendant did not prove there was a connection between her illness and the crime.
For the first time since Katie’s death I can remember her for the sweet girl that she was without feeling the need to then go over the facts of May 13th 2006. Before now I had to go through them to try to make sure I would remember them accurately if I had to testify. The trial is over and I can not think of anything that would be even close to a meritorious appeal. I can now remember Katie how she would want me to remember her.
I appreciate RH’s well-articulated comments on our deliberation. He is absolutely correct in that the decision was not one to be taken lightly by the jury. From this experience Katie has touched another life. Though I never knew her, I will also now never forget her.
WEEK interviews a mother of five Diane Parrish:
Also from the Detroit Free Press.
@R.H.
I can’t thank you enough for sharing all that you have here. I have been thinking about this case and Katie since May of 2006 and the past week and a half of the trial have been………a very lot to think about.
I had not followed this trial and now have wrapped up my reading on it and I appreciate the juror posting about the process
I was on a case a few years ago and we all agreed he was guilty but the process did take a while togo through all the counts.
I feel bad for the father and siblings.
A couple of things…
first, to Moi. I understand how any person who looks at the verdicts may not understand how we could find the general guilty verdict vs. “guilty but mentally ill”. Frankly, it was the part that took the longest to sort though as a group. The defense had the burden of proof once the guilt of the act was established (which it clearly was).
They did not prove to us that *at the time of the act* she was insane. Neither the testimony of the defendant herself nor the experts (on either side) presented clear and convincing evidence to support that she did not know what she was doing was wrong. Regarding the “mental illness” part – just having a mental illness – which she did, both parties agreed – does not warrant that verdict. The verdict is warranted if, by preponderance of the evidence, her mental disorder impaired her judgment at that time, even though she might know that she was doing something wrong. Again, we have to turn to the evidence, and after long, long discussions amongst ourselves, we could not say that was the case.
Regarding the other juror’s comments in the newspaper story – the report is for the most part true, except for one major thing – the deciding factor was not the “little evidence of pre-existing mental illness” – that fact was established. It was the issue of the impact of the illness at the time of the act – that is what we were asked to decide on.
It is interesting to look back know and wonder in some way – why did it take us so long? Simply, we were committed to the process – no one took it lightly – it would be impossbile to do so after listening, reading and seeing everything that we saw. I can understand how some people might think it’s a shame she may not get help for her mental disease, but there was no contention that she was currently suffering from anything – she was released from the institution she had checked herself into, and we got no evidence that suggested she was currently on any medication (not that that would have mattered).
Today’s Peoria Journal-Star interviews neighbors of the McCarrons and a juror, Todd Smith.
My apologies, particularly to Mr McCarron and RH, for making the comment about celebrating the verdict. I’m sure neither of you feel anything like celebrating. What I meant to convey was that I was pleased that the justice system had worked properly. My perspective is that of a lawyer–and one who has worked on literally dozens of murder cases over the years–and it is hard not to be a little jaded sometimes. The jury is the backbone of our legal system, and I am particularly proud of the system when hard-working juries deliberate carefully and come up with the right result, which I feel happened here. I am not surprised that the deliberations took 9 hours–a careful jury that has not prejudged the case should not hurry itself, and I’m glad this one did not.
As to whether or not the case will be appealed, I suspect that it will. Most murder verdicts are. However, in the normal course, the defendant will begin to serve her prison sentence while the appeal is pending.
“Celebrate” doesn’t seem terribly useful here. Justice is good – closure for the family, which allows them to move on pending a whole lot of other things including a possible appeal. The biggest win, if one can call it that is the unequivocal statement that children matter, including autistic children, which may, hopefully, just possibly, put paid to the notion that maybe a parent won’t get away with a judicial slap over the wrist and a job in an autism organisation if they adopt the ‘final solution’.