Posted by Elizabeth on March 2, 2002, at 19:56:22
In reply to murder is murder, posted by Krazy Kat on February 27, 2002, at 16:33:32
I've just been skimming this thread...can somebody tell me the details of the case? I've been doing a lousy job of following the news lately. :-}
I have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea that people who kill someone else because of (for example) a paranoid delusion or a command hallucination are just as guilty of murder as those who are in full posession of their faculties. But perhaps I don't have all the information here, so I'll refrain from forming an opinion about this case until I know more about what happened.
I know that there are some people who try to abuse the insanity defense by claiming that their crimes were caused by "insanity" even though they knew what they were doing and weren't experiencing any type of psychosis. As OldSchool says, these people make us all look bad (and I might add that it's pretty pathetic if someone can be said to give mental illness a worse name than it already has). They belong in prison, although they should have access to psych treatment while they're there. I'm not clear as to whether that was going on in this case since I don't have the facts, tho'.
One note that may be of relevance here: the medical concept of "mental illness" is not the same as the legal concept of "insanity." (The insanity defense is rarely successful, and even when it is, the defendant still ends up being locked up, only in a hospital rather than a prison.)
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:18539
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020223/msgs/19105.html