Friends,
TresHappy contacted me today and let me know that the Providence Journal of Rhode Island reported that Tonya Fuller-Balletta was aquitted because of insanity. Nothing has been reported about sentencing as of yet.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/FULLER_BALLETTA_26_05-27-07_1F5PQL3.2677286.html
Woman not guilty of daughter’s murder
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 27, 2007
PROVIDENCE — Onetime Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Tonya Fuller-Balletta has been found not guilty by reason of insanity of murdering her 12-year-old daughter by setting fire in her house.
Superior Court Judge Susan E. McGuirl found Fuller-Balletta, 39, formerly of 36 Ophelia St., Providence, not guilty Friday on all eight counts of the indictment, which also included first-degree arson, according to the state attorney general’s office.
A psychiatrist for the defense argued during trial that Fuller-Balletta suffered from a "psychotic disorder" when she set the fire.
Fuller-Balletta became enraged on Oct. 29, 2004, and tried to barricade her home when the police arrived to serve her with an old warrant related to an accusation that she had written a bad check.
She allegedly told her daughters the police had come to kill them, and then set a fire in a bedroom at her home at 36 Ophelia St.
Fuller-Balletta and her daughter Marina were taken out the bedroom windows by authorities, but the police could not get to Fuller-Balletta’s daughter Talia, who was burned and died a month later in the hospital.
Fuller-Balletta "was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her behavior" because of her mental illness, psychiatrist Dr. Joseph V. Penn told the court. For at least a year before the fire, Fuller-Balletta exhibited signs of mental illness, he said.
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If you are unfamiliar with this story that affected one of JWD's posters, Utopian Reformist/Mario Balletta, you can read the thread Mario started back in November of 2004:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/9/80403/1.ashx
The anniversary of Talia's birthday is May 31. She would have been 15.
For you, (((Mario))).
Beverly