A New Zealand court on Wednesday found a mother guilty of murdering her three daughters after a harsh month-long trial.
According to local media reports, Lauren Dickason was charged with suffocating and choking her two-year-old twins’ daughters, Maya and Karla, and her first six-year-old daughter Liane, when her husband was out with his colleagues to dinner.
Dickason confessed to murdering her young daughters but had pleaded the defense of insanity and infanticide.
Under New Zealand law, infanticide is a defense for a mother who causes the death of her child when, at the time of the crime, the balance of her mind was bothered.
Soon after the five-member family arrived in New Zealand from South Africa, the young girls were killed at their home in the South Island city of Timaru.
A jury at Christchurch High Court uncovered Dickason guilty of charges of murder.
In New Zealand, murder suffers 10 years sentence in prison. Following the judgment, Scott Anderson, Detective Inspector said in a statement that police extended their sympathies to the families who will never get to see three young daughters, Liane, Maya, and Karla raise.
During a trial, the defense lawyers and prosecution had agreed Dickason was mentally sick when she murdered her daughters. However, they disagreed as to whether her mental condition was such that she was not completely aware of what she was doing.
In court, Andrew McRae, the crown prosecutor told the jury that rage had forced Dickason to kill her daughter.
Kerryn Beaton, Dickason’s lawyer had claimed that the deaths of three young daughters were not due to rage but were the outcome of a mental sickness.
