1) The police had been called to the family home repeatedly in the past, but Daddy was never arrested (typical, especially in Texas). Naturally, the defense then claims at trial that Daddy was "unfairly labeled" as an "abusive spouse" and that Daddy was "law abiding." FIRST MISSED OPPORTUNITY TO "EDUCATE" THIS CONVICTED BABY KILLER, AND/OR REMOVE HIM FROM THE HOME.
2) Mom finally decides to move out once she hears that Daddy has a gun in the home. (And we all know that leaving a batterer is the most dangerous time for women and children, because that's when the abuser's sense of control is the most threatened).
3) She and Daddy work out a deal where she will able to return to the apartment to remove some personal possessions without Daddy's presence. I suppose that because the police were kind enough to NEVER arrest Daddy in the past, she has no real justification (in the eyes of the law) for requesting a police presence now. At any rate, no police are there--until much later. SECOND MISSED OPPORTUNITY.
4) Since abusers are often pathological liars, Daddy does not keep his word. He is not only in the apartment, but pulls a gun on Mom's 15-year-old son for allegedly "stealing" a video game--and also because he wants to gripe about Mom (and be an @$$hole in general).
5) When Mom shows up carrying their 19-month-old son, she puts the boy down when she sees that her other son has a gun pointed at him so she can call 911. Unfortunately, the little boy runs towards his father.
6) Dad points the gun at Mom and fires, but misses. He tries to fire again, but the gun jams.
7) Mom and the older son run out of the house, but they are not able to leave with the 19-month old.
8) Daddy pulls classic Daddy Drama Police Standoff--for hours on end. Daddy periodically holds up the hostage child to the window to show that he's alive--but he's not.
9) When the SWAT team finally storms the apartment, they find the little boy dead with two bullets to the chest. Seems Daddy had written a note--in which he blamed everything that had happened (of course!) on MOM'S "SELFISH PRIDE."
Ladies and gentleman, take careful note because this is the abuser "think" in it's purest form. Nothing is EVER, EVER the criminal's fault. It's always the victim's fault.
So where is the father's rights spin on this? Here it is. The nature of Mom's "selfish pride" is that she didn't let this @sshole, er Oppressed Daddy, see HIS child. She was HURTING Daddy! Of course, this kind of warped thinking has been refined by fathers rights people into "parental alienation syndrome," which then posits that the mother who protects a child from a violent father is more Evil than the abuser himself. So naturally, Daddy is then perfectly justified in venting his OUTRAGE by shooting and killing the child! Because after all he's so darn mad, you know, and just can't help it! So it's Not His Fault! The Malicious Mom and/or the Misandryst Courts made him do what he did! Killer Daddies are Holy Martyrs!
Presumably, Daddy was going to finish with a dramatic suicide, but you know how that goes sometimes. Mislaid plans and all--even when you're trying to pull off the ultimate Daddy Drama.
But check out one of the most telling parts of this sordid tale. When the child failed to die after the first gun shot, Daddy shot him a second time--"because he didn't want his son to think he had a bad daddy." This goes along with the first part of an abuser daddy's delusional thinking--It's Always Mom's fault. Never Daddy's. And Daddy can't be Bad by definition, even when he's a baby killer. Which he's not really, since it's always Mom's fault. So lest Junior get the wrong idea and think that the shooting was Daddy's fault, you shoot him again so he's dead and can't think anything at all, I suppose.(Yes, my head is spinning just trying to recreate this psychopathological thinking for y'all.)
Fortunately, a Texas jury recoiled from this bull malarkey, and decided this f***face wasn't fit to live. And now the execution is scheduled for tonight.
Will we see a rejection of the fathers rights movement that justifies and promotes this kind of ideology of systematic apathy and violence though?
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7439097.html
Houston man who killed son set to die Tuesday
Defense claims instructions to his jury were flawed
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
Feb. 21, 2011, 4:34PM
Timothy Wayne Adams never denied fatally shooting his 19-month-old namesake son, leaving a Houston jury the task of considering only his punishment.
Jurors rejected his lawyers' arguments eight years ago for a life prison term and decided Adams, 42, should die.
The lethal injection, which would be the second in Texas this year, was set for Tuesday evening in Huntsville.
Adams' attorneys went to the courts Friday after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a request to recommend Gov. Rick Perry commute his sentence to life in prison. The board also turned down a request for a four-month execution delay.
In their appeal, they argued his sentence was unconstitutional and that the instructions to his trial jury were flawed. They also contended that his clean prison record belied the jurors' finding that Adams would be a future threat, one of the questions Texas jurors must decide when deliberating a death sentence.
Evidence showed Adams shot his son, Timothy Jr., twice at close range. Prosecutors said the slaying nine years ago this week was intended as retaliation against his wife because she was leaving him. Defense attorneys argued the killing was an aberration in an otherwise law-abiding life and that Adams also had intended to kill himself before friends and police talked him out of it.
Jane Waters, one of the Harris County prosecutors at the trial, said Adams told investigators that when the first shot didn't kill the child, he fired again.
"It was awful," she recalled. "He said he fired a second time because he didn't want his son to think he had a bad daddy.
"And I think that's where the jury said: 'OK. We can kill this guy.'"
Robert Loper, one of Adams' trial lawyers, said Adams pleaded guilty to show he was taking responsibility for his actions and hoped jurors would give him life in prison because he had no previous criminal record and wouldn't be a future danger.
"Absolutely what he did was horrible," Loper said. "That was his son. ... I'll argue for the rest of my life the jury made the wrong decision."
Adams has declined to speak with reporters in recent weeks, agreeing initially to media interviews but then refusing to leave his death row cell.
In earlier court appeals, Adams contended his trial lawyers had been deficient and failed to adequately address prosecution evidence and testimony that he said unfairly labeled him a baby killer and abusive spouse.
He was arrested Feb. 20, 2002, after a SWAT standoff at the family's southwest Houston apartment. Police had been called there repeatedly in the past but Adams never was arrested. Testimony showed his wife had moved out after discovering he was keeping a gun in the apartment. She wanted to remove some of her belongings and Adams agreed not to be present when she showed up. Her 15-year-old son arrived first but Adams was there, confronted him with the gun, accused him of stealing a video game and complained about the boy's mother.
He also wrote her a note.
"Look what you and your selfish pride did," he wrote.
When his wife arrived, carrying 19-month-old Timothy Jr., he confronted her as she put down her child to help her older son.
The little boy ran to his father.
Adams' wife grabbed a phone and called 911. He pointed the gun at her and fired, missed her, then tried firing again but the weapon jammed. She and her older son ran outside without the baby.
Police eventually convinced Adams to surrender. During an hours-long standoff, he held the child through a window to show he was OK but officers entering the apartment found the toddler dead with two bullet wounds to the chest. When police recovered the note he'd written earlier, the slain child's blood was on it.
A medical examiner testified the gun either had been close or against the baby's skin when the shots were fired. Both bullets went completely through his body.
"My wife was hurtin' me," he told detectives in a taped confession. "She was keeping him away from me. ... My parents couldn't even see my son.
"I was gonna take me and my son out."
In the clemency petition, Adams' relatives and supporters said he accepted responsibility for "an unspeakable act."
"Our family lost one child," said his father, Columbus Adams. "We can't bear to lose another."
At least three other Texas death row inmates have execution dates scheduled for the coming months.