Mrs. Mary Leonard, mother of the recently deceased Cindy Leonard, will be the first to be sentenced under the nation's new Love-Crime statute.
Mrs. Leonard faces a maximum penalty of six months in a minimum security prison, for stabbing her beloved daughter Cindy thirty-five times in the chest with a screw driver and eighteen times in the face with a pair of garden shears, before kissing her softly on the forehead and whispering, "Good night, sweetheart."
Prior to the existence of the Love-Crime statute, Mrs. Leonard would have received a maximum penalty of death by lethal injection. Leonard's undying love for her daughter spared her the death penalty.
"I loved her, it's true," said Leonard. "She was my first born, and very precious to me. I couldn't stand the thought of seeing her grow up in a harsh world that would have just tore her apart."
The case raises important legal questions concerning the relation of good intentions to brutal stabbings, and vice versa. Harold Feinberg, Mrs. Leonard's attorney, said there's no such thing as bad people, only bad ideas.
"Who's worse?" Mr. Feinberg said, "The loving mother, who puts her daughter to sleep for her own good, or the loose-cannon intellectual, who shakes the boat with new and unconventional ideas? Which person would you want raising your child?"
The Leonard case is expected to have far-reaching implications in the nation's legal system. As of Friday afternoon, Tyrone Matheson, defendant in the Chicago Subway Massacre, has already changed his plea from Not Guilty to Guilty.
"Those motherfuckers are good and dead," Matheson said. "I'm glad they're dead and they should rot in hell. But at the time - that brief moment when I was shooting their bodies into bloody pulp - I felt touched. For a single moment, we shared a common bond, and I can't deny that. "
Matheson's attorney said he will argue that his client's desire to murder the five dozen commuters was primarily motivated by love, however short-lasting. It is yet to be determined whether the judge will permit a plea of Guilty by Temporary Admiration.
