The hair cut? If the bowl doesn’t fit you must aquit!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself
I think one would have to be insane to kill a group of people. It is one thing to dislike say, Lithuanians because of the rotten fish they eat, but quite another to murder them in a group while waving a toy flag.
So all mass murderers should be found not guilty by reason of insanity? What about the Boston Marathon bomber?
Surprise, surprise, the shooter apparently was a big supporter of Zimmerman. Gee, I wonder why the fuck?
I hope the lawyers and pundits who relentlessly and shamelessly villainized Trayvon Martin with racist innuendo appreciate how their actions contributed to the radicalization of this bowl-cut cunt. If I were them, I would put this shooting in my end-of-year accomplishment report.
As far as using incapacity under M’Naghten goes, there’s nothing to indicate that Roof lacked capacity to understand the nature and quality of what he was doing and that it was wrong, or lacked the ability to resist doing it, so he’ll end up convicted. Good. I hope he never sees the light of day.
That being said, I think that anyone who knowingly is a racist or who knowingly apologizes for racism (as opposed to being culturally blinded without external cultural knowledge) is emotionally unbalanced to some greater or lesser degree, and someone who kills for racism (or murders for any reason) is just plain crazy, although not necessarily criminally liable depending on the degree of crazy. A good example of this sort of thing is when DSM-IV/V psychopaths are convicted of murder. Are they crazy? Yes, with the paperwork to prove it. Do they pass M’Naghten? Not usually, so down they go.
I hadn’t thought of that, I just think the guy is nuts.
Saying Roof must be nuts is a cop-out.
There is no pill or therapeutic intervention that will make a person stop being racist.
Cop out of what? I don’t imply a connection between insanity and racism, and I don’t think he should be punished differently. I just pointed out that he appears to me to be crazy.
Because by saying he’s crazy, you’re implying that he was acting out of his own idiosyncratic delusions rather than a deeply entrenched, very much alive ideology with many adherents.
There is no reason to believe he wasn’t in control of his mental faculties when he killed all those people. Maybe he wasn’t, I don’t know. But I’d like to have evidence before concluding he’s nuts. “Nuts” is actually supposed to mean something.
He isn’t *just *racist - he’s a racist with a skewed enough view of reality that he thought he’d start a race war by shooting 9 unarmed, peaceful people in an incredibly sympathetic environment.
His manifesto is whack.
I agree that he’s responsible for his actions - I don’t think he’s the kind of crazy that doesn’t know right from wrong - but yes, he’s sick.
There’s nuts, and then there’s nuts. A person has to be very, very, very nuts (e.g. severe psychosis nuts) to be nuts enough to get a get out of jail card.
There’s a lot of logical (or illogical) contradiction. Any number of religious leaders hear the voice of god and then carry out god’s personal instructions to them (urging the flock to donate money, hate gays, etc.), and this is usually considered to be perfectly normal by their flocks, but a person hearing the voice of god and then carrying out god’s instructions by decapitating a stranger with a knife and chowing down on him is considered to be nutty enough to not be convicted (he was locked up in a psych facility and is gradually being reintroduced into society). Is hearing the voice of god necessarily considered to be psychosis?
Similarly, when someone is shit-faced drunk and unable to understand what they are doing, they still usually get convicted for DUI, despite at the time of the incident being utterly incapable of understanding what they were doing, based on the reasoning that they should have known better in the first place (which they should have, IMHO), although occasionally some folks still get off on some nasty crimes using the drunkenness defense (it gets a bit complicated, dancing about on the head of a legal pin).
I prefer to say that he’s simply stupid. His actions are emblematic of a stupid person. But sickness, I can’t say.
Simple stupidity does not equate with premeditated mass murder. There’s something very bent about the fellow.
He is certainly stupid.
Ah, but we’re quibbling about semantics. We all feel he’s an asshole and legally responsible for his actions, so let’s embrace and enjoy our vitriol together, shall we?
:dubious: I think Jews are just as likely as any other group to have racist individuals.
carnivorous plant, do you think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is nuts?
The younger brother? I think he was talked into it or recruited by his brother.
I think he was pretty far gone already if he can be talked into killing and maiming an unknown number of random strangers who had nothing to do with his “cause”.