‘God told mother to beat two young sons to death with stones’

US AUTHORITIES have charged a Texas mother with capital murder for allegedly beating two of her young sons, aged six and eight, to death with rocks.

eanna LaJune Laney, 38, was also charged with aggravated assault for allegedly beating but not killing her 14-month-old boy.

Her third son was in critical condition at a hospital in Dallas, about 100 miles from Tyler.

Smith County Sheriff JB Smith said Laney had killed her sons last Saturday morning and then called police to report what she had done.

"She did say, 'I have killed my two boys,'" Smith told reporters at a press conference.

The Dallas Morning News reported that she told police God had ordered her to kill the children.

Officers arriving at her house found the two dead boys, Joshua and Luke, in the yard and the toddler bleeding in his crib.

She was wearing blood-spattered pyjamas.

Laney would be eligible for the death penalty if convicted, but prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the maximum punishment.

They could opt to seek only a life sentence.

"It is too early for that decision to be made," Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen told reporters.

Laney is being held in lieu of $3 million bond at the Smith County Jail, where she is under suicide watch.

The killings hark back to the case of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who believed she had to drown her five children in the family bathtub two years ago to save them from hell.

Yates, a former nurse who suffered from severe postpartum psychosis, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. She, too, called police to report what she had done.