TYLER, Texas (AP) - Psychiatric experts for both the defense and prosecution agree that Deanna Laney, scheduled to go on trial Monday, was mentally ill last Mother's Day weekend when she stoned two of her sons to death and severely injured a third.

But while her lawyers will try to prove she is innocent by reason of insanity, prosecutors maintain she knew right from wrong and is guilty of two counts of capital murder and one count of serious injury to a child. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty.

A jury of eight men and four women, chosen last week and immediately sequestered because of media attention, was set to begin hearing the case Monday.

Laney, 39, a deeply religious woman who home-schooled her children in the tiny town of New Chapel Hill, 100 miles southeast of Dallas, called 911 just after midnight on May 10 and told a dispatcher: "I've just killed my boys."


She said God ordered her to do it.

Deputies found 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Luke lying in the yard in their underwear, their skulls smashed and stones the size of dinner plates lying on their lifeless bodies. Their 14-month-old brother, Aaron, was found in his crib, alive but bleeding from a fractured skull, a pillow over his face. He is recovering.

Laney's husband, Keith, who apparently slept through the attacks, has supported his wife, attending several court hearings over the past year along with other family members.

State District Judge Cynthia Kent has ordered attorneys in the case not to comment.

Attorneys not connected to the case said the nature of the crime will make it difficult for a jury to find Laney innocent.

"You have totally blameless victims who are children," said Tyler attorney David Dobbs, a former Smith County prosecutor who has tried more than 20 capital murder cases. "Blameless child victims just make everybody take a deep breath."

Jurors rejected an insanity defense for Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in their family's bathtub in June 2001 and told police the devil told her to do it. She is serving a life sentence.

The insanity defense is always difficult to prove, even if experts on both sides say that Laney was insane, attorneys say.

Psychiatric experts concluded Laney had four psychotic episodes before the killings and probably had suffered from delusional psychotic disorder for at least three years.

"The difficulty in this case is getting the jury to go from the position that everybody thinks she's crazy to the position that she is legally insane under Texas law," Dobbs said.

"It's a very hard standard. ... People can be really mentally ill but if they have the capacity to understand that their conduct is wrong, under our law, they are sane."

Laney called 911 after the killings, which some say jurors could see as an awareness of wrongdoing. Yates also called 911.

During jury selection, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham urged jurors to consider that psychiatric evaluations were "subjective opinions" and suggested that mental health experts could be misled.

"Mental illness does not equal insanity," Bingham told prospective jurors.

George Parnham, who represented Andrea Yates, said Laney's attorneys will have a difficult time getting the jurors to focus on her mental illness rather than graphic images of dead children.

"That's a hurdle and it will always be until we reach a level of sophistication regarding mental health," Parnham said.

Laney is not expected to testify, but her husband and his brother, mother and sister are among probable witnesses.

i hope they give her the death penalty. Someone like that deserves hanging, injection, the chair, etc. (preferably the firing squad)

The whole "Pleading Insanity" is garbage. If they are found insane, they should be sent to a Mental Asylum/Prison for life. Saying "God" made her do it and her Husband slept through it are hilarious. Put both of them behind bars.