This is just lovely:

Linda Lee Smith, 52, has spent 24 years in prison in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Amy. Although the parole board has declared her suitable for release six times since 1989, the state's governors have decided otherwise.

Smith was convicted of second-degree murder in San Luis Obispo County in 1980 and sentenced to 15 years to life after she did not stop her boyfriend from fatally beating Amy. Whether Smith participated in Amy's abuse was hotly disputed at her trial. The prosecution argued that by not aggressively intervening, she condoned the violence.

That Smith may have been a victim of domestic violence was no defense, Schwarzenegger said. He said in his May 18 letter denying parole that Smith still poses "an unreasonable threat to public safety."

Yeah, she may be averse to getting the living shit kicked out of her by a new boyfriend, so that makes her a menace to society. Thanks, Arnold, for clearing that up.

But she's not the only one.

Oberman and other legal scholars say there is no doubt prosecutions and convictions of mothers in children's deaths are on the rise. Anecdotal evidence from court dockets supports that:

• In Lake County, Ind., the county prosecutor isn't excusing Felicia Gordon for not intervening in the fatal beating of her son George, 7, in March. Gordon, 27, of Gary, was charged with murder after her boyfriend repeatedly hit, punched and kicked the boy to death. She admitted to police that she could hear beating and screaming for 10 minutes. Her attorney, Lemuel Stigler, says she stayed in another room during most of the incident because she was trying to protect her other son, a 1-year-old. She says her boyfriend pointed a gun at her after the beating and threatened to hurt her if she called police. If convicted at her trial this summer, she could face more than 65 years in prison.

It seems that this "Sophie" made the wrong choice -- she was supposed to go get herself and both of her sons killed. Anything short of that is simply child neglect!

Mary Becker, an Illinois attorney involved in a protection case, says mothers are being treated differently under the law because they are assumed to be a child's natural protector. Fathers rarely are charged, she says.

In 1992, Illinois became the first state to consider parents accomplices to first-degree murder if they don't protect their children. That's when an appellate court upheld the conviction of Kimberly Novy of Shiloh, Ill., saying that although she'd been battered by her husband and may not have caused her stepson's fatal injuries, her actions —— and inaction ——made her responsible for his murder. She is serving 30 years.

The following year, Illinois prosecuted Kathy Cecil of Wood River for the first-degree murder of her 2-year-old son, Michael. She didn't participate in his fatal beating and had been repeatedly punched, choked and raped by her lover for months. Cecil, now 31, was sentenced to 35 years in jail.

Battered women don't get much sympathy in many of these cases. Some prosecutors say abuse of the mother is irrelevant.



"That's not an excuse for standing by and letting someone beat your child to death," says Terry Patton, the state's attorney in Henry County, Ill.

It truly amazes me how the legal system attempts to scapegoat anyone but the person responsible. Conservatives like to talk about "personal responsibility," but these conservative efforts -- and make no mistake, these anti-mother laws are right in line with their twisted view of "law and order" policies -- seem to do everything possible to remove responsibility from the actual abuser. Perhaps this is a legacy attitude that stems from concepts of property rights. After all, if a man "owns" his woman, then he has a right to, um, keep her in line, right?

Of course, this kind of scapegoating and fingerpointing by conservatives goes all the way up to the top, where President Bush seems unwilling to take responsibility for anything. But, to be fair, such buck-passing is something men on all points of the political spectrum have shown a talent for. Some women, too. Such is life in a world where men write and enforce the laws that men break.

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