Texas has a reputation for doling out pretty harsh treatment when it comes to murder. Apparently – in Austin, anyway – exceptions will be made if the victim is devalued enough.
Last Friday, Katherine “Kim” Yarbrough received ten years of probation in a plea bargain. Yarbrough had admitted to killing her husband, Lloyd Yarbrough. Nevertheless, she was allowed to plead to “injury to a disabled individual.”
From the article in the Austin-American Statesman:
Police say Yarbrough admitted killing her husband, Lloyd, 62, by injecting his feeding tube with an assortment of crushed prescription pills. She then swallowed some drugs of her own, police have said. A police officer found the couple in bed May 27 at their home on Meadowview Lane, near Lamar and Research boulevards in North Austin.
Here is what the authorities have to say about the plea deal:
Outside court Friday, prosecutor Amy Meredith said that considering the facts of the case and Yarbrough’s clean criminal history, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg did not think that a prison term was warranted.
Meredith noted that for years when selecting jurors in murder cases, prosecutors had used an example similar to Yarbrough’s — when one spouse kills another to end that spouse’s suffering — as a type of murder case that might warrant a probation sentence. (emphasis added.)
The problem with that rationale – and its reported in the article, but not as a problem, is that Kim Yarbrough never claimed to have killed her husband to end his suffering:
She blogged about her frustrations with outside caregivers and a lack of a support system.
“I wonder if I will ever change Lloyd’s diaper without feeling the pain of what has been lost,” she blogged four days before his death.
Two days before his death, she wrote, “Why should I keep living through all this?”
While in the hospital, Yarbrough was interviewed by police. According to an arrest affidavit, she told an officer that she killed her husband “because she was tired of taking care of him.” When an officer asked her if Lloyd Yarbrough wanted to die, she said “no,” the affidavit said. (emphasis added.)
There is no way to reconcile Kim Yarbrough’s statements to the police with the statements of the prosecutor attempting to explain this plea bargain. I guess they figure in Austin that if you’re a “caregiver” you also get to end that role, in whatever way you see fit. I guess they figure that killing someone as disabled as Lloyd Yarbrough isn’t the same as a “real” murder.
If you think I’m being too harsh, several of the comments to this story have people praising this woman – evidently they don’t know how to read or they don’t think what Lloyd Yarbrough wanted mattered. –Stephen Drake
Yikes! Scary. And, how much public discussion has there been and will there be about lack of supports for those of us with disabilities and our caregivers?
How apt is my “word verification” on being disabled and this blog post?
(“scram”)
Sanda, there is *some* talk of that, but stress and depression don’t usually fly as defenses for murder in Texas. I have mixed feelings about that myself, since for every “overburdened” caregiver who commits murder, you can find hundreds of similarly situated people who don’t do violence to people they love, let alone murder them.
I think that the framing of this from the prosecutors is even more disturbing than usual – since the perpetrator herself admitted the murder was an act to relieve *her* suffering – NOT her husband’s.
Just want to make it clear that I’m not “defending” the murder. (As a person with severe disabling illness, ME/CFS, I realize that “it could be me” in each instance NDY covers.)
I am sad that our need for supports (as Clair Lewis and you have pointed out in other posts, here and linked) for life are not addressed by the media/society/government, etc.
It seems to me Texas has a number of precepts they follow quite religiously. Personal responsibility no matter what is only one of them.
The one that appears to have trumped this time though is what one of my TX friends calls their “Bootstrap Precept .” This is the overarching belief that everyone should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps–those that don’t, are worthless (personal responsibility fits here). Those who have no bootstraps? Well, they deserve whatever anyone feels like giving them (and they should be grateful for it too!) Mr. Y had no bootstraps… Mrs Y put hers to work–end of story.
I know this woman…she is selfish beyond belief…If you spent even five minutes with her, you would realize that this was nothing more than her desire to be done with care giving…
Your comments don’t surprise me in the least. Evidently, the prosecutors and the judge didn’t think her husband’s murder merited more than a hand slap, regardless of her motives.
That isn’t true. If you knew anything about her or this case, you’d know she cared deeply about Lloyd, and provided round the clock care for him from the day he got out of the hospital. She had the option to dump him in a nursing home, *on the taxpayer’s dime*, but she didn’t. She spent an average of 20 hours a day caring for him, *for years*.
The things she wrote in the blog came from her deepest despair during the worst time in her life. Nobody seems to be taking that into account at all. But the courts did. There’s a reason this case ended the way it did. As usual, the media refuses to report the story as it happened, and instead juiced it up for maximum public reaction.
Everything you’re saying here is just confirming what I wrote on that blog. Again – the prosecutor’s explanation was ludicrous – she admitted to killing her husband to put him out of her misery. You praise her for saving the taxpayers’ money. She saved them even more when she killed him rather than admit she needed help. I guess y’all should give her a medal for that – you’ve done stranger things in Texas.