She Killed Her 3 Kids. Does She Belong in Prison?
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2020
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In March 2014, Carol Coronado was a new mother who committed an unthinkable act of violence: She stabbed and killed her three daughters, who were all under the age of three. Coronado's lawyer unsuccessfully argued that she was in the grip of an acute mental illness when she attacked her children. The judge said he thought Coronado was suffering from a mental condition and then sentenced her to three consecutive life terms without parole. In this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, host Jamilah King is joined by KQED health reporter April Dembosky to talk about her yearlong investigation into a devastating but under-reported condition called postpartum psychosis. The condition afflicts one to two moms out of 1,000 births, but psychiatrists believe that could underestimate the frequency because the symptoms are so easy to miss. Dembosky constructs and analyzes the data behind postpartum psychosis and looks into how the health care and legal systems could better serve women affected by this frightening condition. This radio documentary was first aired on KQED's California Sunday Magazine show earlier this month.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:04.4 | On today's show, a shocking confounding story about the unthinkable. |
| 0:18.7 | Her children were dead before she understood she stabbed them. |
| 0:23.0 | Does she belong in prison? |
| 0:24.5 | A new investigation into motherhood and postpartum psychosis, |
| 0:29.1 | a mental illness that affects one or two out of every 1,000 moms after birth and how the law is |
| 0:36.0 | lagging behind the science. After a year of collecting data, thousands of court |
| 0:41.2 | records, audio from prison, a thoroughly reported portrait of how |
| 0:46.2 | tragedy heaps on tragedy and reforming the insanity defense. |
| 0:51.0 | Stay tuned. At the Mother Jones podcast, we bring you investigations that don't flinch from how complicated life can be, |
| 1:02.0 | and this story is a gut punch. So a warning here for you. |
| 1:07.3 | What you're about to hear includes charged descriptions of violence and loss. If that's upsetting for you, you might consider |
| 1:15.4 | skipping this episode. |
| 1:18.8 | California's prison system does not keep data on how many women are incarcerated for |
| 1:27.4 | killing their kids. So April Dembowski, a health policy reporter for the California report at KQED in San Francisco, |
| 1:36.2 | submitted requests for the names of all the women currently in state prisons for murder and manslaughter. |
| 1:43.2 | She reviewed thousands of court records and news reports to determine that just over 100 women |
| 1:50.3 | are in prison in the state for killing their children. |
| 1:53.7 | Her investigation is now at Mother Jones.com and April joins me now from KQED. |
| 1:59.6 | April, what question were you trying to answer by finding this number out? |
| 2:04.0 | Well, I was interested in the number itself. |
| 2:06.3 | You know, when these cases hit the news, the public often reacts like it's the first time |
... |
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