Mom found guilty but mentally ill
PITTSBURGH — A woman charged with drowning her two youngest sons in their bathtub because she wanted to be a better mother to their older brother was found guilty but mentally ill of third-degree murder.
Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning on Thursday found that Laurel Schlemmer's mental capacity was diminished by her illness, meaning she couldn't form the specific intent to kill that was required of the first-degree murder conviction prosecutors sought for the April 2014 killings.
Schlemmer faces as much as 20 to 40 years in prison on each third-degree murder count, but because she was found mentally ill, she'll begin any sentence in a state mental hospital and then will be moved to prison if doctors ever deem her cured.
“It is my fervent hope that in the future, mental health treatment will bring you, Ms. Schlemmer, to the shocking realization of what you have done so that you will continue to be punished far beyond any sentence this court may impose,” Manning said.
Defense attorney Michael Machen called the case “difficult and complex” and praised the judge for navigating the mental health issues that made the case a whodunit instead of a whodunit. Manning said in delivering the verdict that he was forced to “wrestle with some puzzling psychiatric issues.”
A friend of Schlemmer's, Jenn Martino, handed out a brief statement on behalf of other friends.
“We do not condone or excuse what she did,” the statement said. “However, we want people to know she is not heartless, but rather a beloved child of God who sadly was suffering from mental illness in the form of depression and anxiety.”
