Crime Article-Mentally Incompetent Mom

Danielle Buechel

I read a report about a woman who was deemed mentally incompetent by a jury to stand trial. The woman, who is accused of severing her baby's arms on Nov. 22, 2004, was ordered to seek treatment in a mental hospital before she can stand trial in the case.

I searched the latimes.com website archives and found the orignial article which was more informative than this updated version posted Feb. 15. I thought that though this article provided the bare minimum facts about the alleged incident, the article was written very impersonally and worked to describe the jury ruling about the woman's mental competence.

I thought that the article fairly depicted the the woman as the alleged perpetrator but little was said about the 10-month-old baby who was involved in the case. The author did a great job including descriptions of the woman's appearance in shackles and her vacant stare when she face jury members in the courtroom.

I think that the article could have been improved if the author would have looked back to the article previously written in November, shortly after the incident took place, and incorporated some of those details to help fill in the background information.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mom15feb15,1,4115268.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true