At the risk of taking a joke seriously, I suspect the penalty phase will result in a death sentence; and death sentences in headline trials are almost always appealed.
My guess is she will still be with us in a decade's time.
"Lori Vallow will not face the death penalty in her upcoming murder trial after east Idaho district Judge Steven Boyce granted a request from Vallow’s defense team on Tuesday.
The team asked to remove potential capital punishment due to the media saturation with the case, Vallow’s mental condition and alleged missteps in handing over evidence by prosecutors."
Death penalty cases are often much more expensive to pursue as opposed to keeping someone in jail for the rest of his or her life. They are expensive due to all of the appeals.
messygoop Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Do you think her lawyers will file an appeal? > > Maybe it wasn't a fair trial because some > non-Nephites were allowed to serve on the jury.
Of course they will file an appeal. Not an attorney, so very much open to correction, but I believe they need to have a valid reason to file an appeal, not just a "we are unhappy about the verdict and want someone else to rule differently". I believe they need to cite (what they believe) to be procedural errors or bad rulings by the trial judge, or claim inadequate defense.
That'll get the ball rolling and, when an adverse ruling issues, you can allege another valid reason and start the process all over again. The courts bend over backwards to ensure fairness in capital punishment cases, so this can go on for a long time.
If Vallow wants to stay alive, she can for many years.
Lot's Wife Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You need to ALLEGE a valid reason for an appeal. > > > That'll get the ball rolling and, when an adverse > ruling issues, you can allege another valid reason > and start the process all over again. The courts > bend over backwards to ensure fairness in capital > punishment cases, so this can go on for a long > time. > > If Vallow wants to stay alive, she can for many > years.
This wasn't a capital punishment case. They took the death penalty off the table in her case. Chad's trial will be a capital trial.
Well, as a convicted child killer, she won't do well in the general prison population. Even prisoners have their standards. I think she's going to have a lot of alone time in which to ponder her sins.
I wouldn't be surprised if a judge grants her a new trial or throws out the conviction. I'm rather surprised that the court found her sane to begin with.
Idaho does not have a traditional insanity defense. The question therefore does not arise.
But even if it did, "legal" insanity is not the same thing as "medical" insanity. The standard would be something like whether Lori 1) understands the charges against her, 2) is capable of conforming her actions to the law--in other words, she was capable of not murdering her children--and 3) can competently assist in her own defense. She meets all of those requirements.
If she were locked up in a hospital for the criminally insane, or a prison, I'd be OK with either of those.
I think she probably is medically insane, but then so are a lot of Mormons who have really gone off the deep end - you know, the Church of the Firstborn-ers and Dream Mine Believers, and FLDS - those people.
Idaho does not recognize "guilty but insane" because it doesn't recognize insanity as a defense in the first place.
And frankly, I suspect most shrinks would not pronounce her insane insofar as crazy beliefs are pretty common among humans. I don't think that Lori, or Chad, or the Laffertys, or Ted Bundy, or Trump qualify as insane because they simply choose to belief, with varying degrees of certainty, what is in their interests to believe. That's not insanity.
Remember that psychopaths don't care about truth. Truth is what they want it to be--and they are absolutely sincere in that conviction, which is why they frequently pass lie detector tests and why they often get others to follow them. It may be a factual lie but the emotions behind it are real.
Lot's Wife Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Remember that psychopaths don't care about truth. > Truth is what they want it to be--and they are > absolutely sincere in that conviction, which is > why they frequently pass lie detector tests and > why they often get others to follow them. It may > be a factual lie but the emotions behind it are > real.
Thinking of the name/s you included in your comment, I would not use the descriptor "sincere". More like to obtain personal gain. Too, to me, a lie is volitional. A mistake is not. Being misinformed is not or at least not necessarily. But lying is a choice. It's hard to believe that a person isn't aware they're lying when they are demonstrably doing so. At the least, they should be willing to accept correction, especially in the light of incontrovertible evidence. I would query the emotions element too. Not all the same across the board, of course.
Oh, psychopaths and sociopaths know they're lying. They just don't care. They don't care so much, in fact, that they are committed not to factual truth but to their own emotional needs, which they express with the sincerity normal people associate with truth.
Again, that's why lie detectors are of little or no use when dealing with them. Telling lies is so natural to them that they don't have the normal physiological stresses when doing so. To the contrary, psychopaths evaluate everything according to their own desires. By that standard, lies are more real in emotional terms than facts are.
with the growth of technologies & some other disciplines, telling 'the whole truth' isn't 100% as definitive as we once thought...
Take for example the questions regarding coffee & tea (see recent thread); this partly explains why some ('religious') people prefer to have so much of life determined & decided for themselves by others.
I understand that to be a primary reason why TBMs stick the way they do while others examine & question dicta.