The Right to Kill

If her children had been healthy and she wanted them dead for whatever reason, this murder would NEVER get away with the crap she's trying to spew in public.

Murder is murder, no matter whether the victim is healthy or disabled.

Some background:

The murder was horrifying. So was all-too-certain knowledge that this would not be a case viewed by the Georgia community with horror at all, for Michael Randy Scott, 42, and Andy Byron Scott, 41, were described as having "suffered from a long-term degenerative disease." (The next day readers would learn it was Huntington's Chorea.) The only uncertainty on the part of disability activists was how long it would take for the term "mercy killing" to be applied to the murders.

Not long. Scott Walters, attorney for the mother, Carol Carr, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Jeffrey Scott on June 11 that Carr, discovering Randy Scott had been catheterized, believed he was in pain.

"He's begging her with his eyes. She knew he was crying for mercy," Walters explained.

There it was. "Mercy."

"The investigation shows it's a mercy killing," Lt. Joe Estenes of the Griffin police told Scott. "We don't believe it was premeditated. But the law doesn't differentiate between a mercy killing and premeditated killing. It's really bothering me, man."

...

New York City activists Nadina LaSpina and Danny Robert met with Debra Lovecky of the Huntington's Disease Society of America; impact of the meeting has so far been hard to gauge. Mark Johnson has been reaching out to the Huntington's Disease group in Georgia; he hopes that the group will soon join Georgia activists in advocating for home-based alternatives to nursing homes. Perhaps, he hopes, there'll be an opportunity to talk about the dangers we all face as a result of the belief that Scott brothers weren't really persons any more, and that their deaths shouldn't count as a real murder.

Because if that message wins the day, no one with a cognitive disability is safe.