[url]http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/06/drowning.trial.ap/index.html[/url]

[QUOTE]DECATUR, Illinois (AP) -- A mother helped plot the drowning deaths of her three children to preserve her relationship with the man who killed them, prosecutors said in closing arguments Wednesday in the woman's murder trial.

Prosecutor Roger Simpson said Amanda Hamm, 30, has low self-esteem and needed a man to "validate her existence."

Hamm faces life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, Christopher Hamm, 6, Austin Brown, 3, and Kyleigh Hamm, 23 months. The children died after Hamm's car sank at a Clinton Lake boat ramp on September 2, 2003.

Prosecutors allege Hamm and then-boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr. planned the drownings because the children were in the way of their relationship. Hamm and LaGrone have maintained the deaths were a tragic accident that occurred after LaGrone parked the car too close to the water during a family outing.

LaGrone, 31, was convicted in April of first-degree murder in the children's deaths and is serving life in prison without parole.

Simpson said that LaGrone abused both Hamm and her children.

"Her man became her addiction," Simpson said. "She could not give up her addiction to help herself, she could not give up her addiction to help her children."

The judge gave jurors the choice of considering an alternative lesser charge, endangering the life or health of a child, which carries a sentence ranging from probation to up to 20 years in prison.[/QUOTE]

This is just sick, she helps kill her kids to preserve her realtionship with the murderer. I say both of them need the death penality, lets say by tieing them to an anchor and putting them underwater til they die. Let them feel the fear and agony the children when through. Life in prison for them is too good.