Seth wrote:mistermack wrote:Seth wrote:The problem I have with the insanity defense is "not guilty by reason of insanity." It should be "guilty, but insane." After all, there is no question that he murdered people, so he is guilty of those acts, but his insanity should be a mitigating factor IN HIS SENTENCING.
Under no circumstances, however, should he be in a position to walk out of a mental institution after being "restored to sanity" with no record of having murdered people.
You can kill someone, and not be guilty. If you ARE GENUINELY insane, it really is not your fault.
No more than if you are physically ill.
Take the rare cases where people have killed their partner in a dream, without waking. You can't call them guilty. If you genuinely are not conscious or sane, you can't be called guilty.
This is a conundrum indeed. I can distinguish between someone who is asleep, or who does not think or know they are killing another person because they are so delusional that their act is aimed at a hallucination like a monster or pink elephant and a paranoid schizophrenic who knows full well that he is targeting and killing other human beings that he thinks are a threat (though not an immediate one) to him. However paranoid or schizophrenic he might be, he still targeted human beings specifically for political reasons. He was not fighting alien monsters and he did not kill someone accidentally while trying to deal with a hallucination or dream. He knew exactly what he was doing, and his excuse that he was killing them for political reasons doesn't wash.
I don't believe you are in a position to know that. How did you acquire this information?
Seth wrote:
The problem is that psychiatrists would have us believe that they can tell. No they can't. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. And I have to agree with your last bit, someone like this should never walk free, on the word of any psychiatrist or panel. I don't trust their word on sanity, or on the safety of a "cure".
Correct. A clever and intelligent paranoid schizophrenic can be very devious and can potentially fake a recovery long enough to be released. It's certainly happened before.
That's really the gist of it, as I said. People don't trust the insanity defense. They don't buy it. I understand that.
Seth wrote:
I would just classify genuinely insane killers as innocent, but too dangerous to be free. They can't have the benefit of the doubt. The public has to have that.
And no way does this guy fit the bill of a genuinely insane killer. Unless he has a long history of insanity and didn't do all that planning that we heard of.
I just wonder why all the resistance to declaring him guilty of murder with the mitigating circumstance of insanity? He clearly committed the murders, and the law should discount mens rea only insofar as the punishment for the crime is concerned. That's the distinction between first and second degree murder (deliberation) and manslaughter (reckless disregard), which is only a distinction in the DEGREE of of the offense. Guilty of murder while insane should just be another degree of the offense of unlawfully killing another human being and should go towards the sentence, not guilt or innocence.
Because insanity negates the mental state necessary for "murder." I would call it "insanity induced homicide." Like "negligent homicide."
He clearly KILLED the people. Murder is different than killing in that murder has a particular mental state - intent to kill or intent to do great bodily harm. If he was insane, he didn't have that mental state. So, it wouldn't be "murder." It would be "homicide" but not murder.
You are right that the distinction between 1st and 2d degree murder is that 1st degree requires "premeditation and deliberation," whereas 2d degree is merely "intent to kill" or "intent to do great bodily harm resulting in death." But, manslaughter (the recklessness or hot blood killing) is "not" murder. It's manslaughter, because of the different mens rea.
