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Mom who threw kids in SF Bay is found legally insane
SAN FRANCISCO – A young mother who claimed she tossed her three young sons in San Francisco Bay to send them to heaven was declared criminally insane Wednesday by a judge who spared her a possible life sentence.
The rare ruling came a day after jurors found LaShuan Harris, 24, guilty of second-degree murder in the drownings of her three boys in 2005.
The decision will void the jury verdicts and Harris will be sent to a mental hospital indefinitely instead of state prison. She can be released if doctors find her legally sane.
“Yesterday there was no justice,” said defense attorney Teresa Caffese. “Yesterday it was about the law. Today there was justice.”
Caffese argued Harris was schizophrenic and borderline mentally retarded and she was convinced she was acting on orders from God when she plunged 6-year-old Trayshawn Harris, 2-year-old Taronta Greely Jr. and 16-month-old Joshua Greely into the chilly waters.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ksenia Tsenin agreed, saying Harris “was incapable of knowing or understanding the quality of her acts.”
A spokeswoman said District Attorney Kamala Harris did not oppose the defense’s efforts to have Lashuan Harris committed rather than jailed. And prosecutor Linda Allen did not offer any additional evidence countering the defense position.
The decision nullifies the jury’s guilty verdicts on three counts each of second-degree murder and assault of a child causing death. She would have faced at least 25 years in prison for those crimes.
On Oct. 19, 2005, Harris led her children to the end of Pier 7. She undressed them, struggling a bit with the older ones, and then threw them over a railing into the bay, according to a frightened witness who watched in disbelief.
Harris knew they couldn’t swim, but said she thought she was sending them to heaven. God had commanded her to sacrifice them, her most precious possessions, Harris later told psychiatrists. Passersby said she seemed dazed, disoriented.
Police caught up with her as she calmly walked down the pier pushing the empty stroller. Only one boy’s body was found.
Prosecutors decided last summer not to seek the death penalty against Harris, but said it was important to try the case.
“This woman committed a homicide – there’s no question there,” prosecution spokeswoman Linda Klee said at the time. “The question here is whether she spends her life in prison or in a hospital. That’s up to a court and a jury.”
Harris was hospitalized for mental illness six times between February 2004 and August 2005.
On the day the children died, her mother warned a social worker that she would hurt the boys, but the social worker did not believe the warning because Harris was such a good mother, according to the defense.
Several jurors – unable to consider her mental state in the guilt portion of the trial – said they were relieved the judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
“We want this woman to get the help she needs,” said juror Chuck O’Grady.
Her mother, teary-eyed, but smiling, said she was relieved.
Even Harris, her lawyer said, is relieved.
“She was very sad to be convicted because she doesn’t believe she killed them. She thinks she can join them in heaven,” Caffese said. “She wants to go the hospital.”
Harris will return to court on Feb. 7 to determine where she’ll be sent.
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