Sometimes it is not the most extreme example of violence in our society that makes us think, but simply the saddest.

According to the Associated Press, 70-year-old Marie Noe admitted Monday to killing eight of her children between 1949 and 1968 by smothering them.

She was sentenced to 20 years probation, five years of home confinement and mental health treatment to determine the cause of her aberrant behavior.

This is a truly sensible decision made with society in mind.

Often, criminal behavior is not simply the act of evil people seeking to harm others for the simple pleasure of spreading chaos.

Granted, that can often be the case.

But it should be widely recognized by now that unusual criminal behavior can be the result of serious mental illness.

If a person became physically incapacitated through no fault of his own while driving a care and injured a pedestrian, we would not call that act murder.

If that same person suffered a seizure and injured a bystander while in line for a movie, we would not think of calling that act assault.

But when an individual suffering from a debilitating mental illness acts in an otherwise unpredictable fashion, we still attribute them with free will.

The problem is that our society has not yet caught up with medical reality.

Mental illnesses have physical causes.

“This is not one of those situations where we have a heart of a killer,” said defense attorney David Rudenstein.

Mental illness is not just an excuse.

“It’s important for the medical community and the legal community that she admit these murders and … something good will come out of the analysis,” said Deputy District Attorney Charles F. Gallagher at the sentencing.

Both sides in the case recognize this woman has a problem.

We applaud their enlightened approach to the law for putting the real needs of society over the base desire to see someone punished in the most horrific way possible for their crime.