That idea is reasonable (I doubt if such a person could be re-habbed, and I sure as hell don’t want him running loose, so a lockup is a lockup, in this case).
What is not reasonable is to suggest that referring a case of apparant criminal conduct to a court was, somehow, unjust.
If you wish to argue that the criminal justice system failed, fine.
Do not say that the criminal justice system had no business dealing with the case.
There really is a difference - :wally
Agreed that in those rare cases where the defendent is found not guilty by reason of insanity, a secure hospital and therapy seems the most humane answer. Such a person, IMHO should not be elgible for the death penalty.
Hijack: what about that slippery “temporary insanity” defense?
Actually, my plea for sympathy was for I am Spartacus, on account of him acting kinda like a jerk, not the man in the link.
Curse my sloppy phrasing.
The various applications of legal insanity are serious matters of contention, and calling someone a fascist scumbag because he disagrees with you is just not very nice.
Some hard statistics are called for.
Have a few of you forgotten the rules for posting in IMHO, or are you pleading insanity? You know damn well that name-calling and criticizing others opinions is not allowed here. I’m going to transfer this to Great Debates, though the manners of some here are “Pit” worthy.
AHunter3, I’m not quite sure I followed your discussion of legal insanity, but the way I read it, I think you are off. Ability to distinguish right from wrong is at the heart of a legal insanity determination.
Anyway, having read the links, I think the court screwed up on the competency issue (which should have been the end of the discussion), but not on the legally insane issue.
As shorthand (and bear in mind that this is very simplified and therefore not completely accurate) say we have two delusional people who kill someone because the voices in their head told them to. Delusional #1 hears the Archangel Gabriel’s voice, and it was Gabriel who told him to kill. Delusional #2 hears Lucifer’s voice, and it was Lucifer who told him to kill.
In our system, it is the delusional who kills because Lucifer told him to do so who should be found guilty, and the delusional who kills because Gabriel told him to do so who should be found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
IOW, within their delusion, did the accused act properly? If you pretend that the delusion was the truth (as it is for the delusional person), did the accused respond morally to the delusion?
From the story above, Tortorici did not act properly within his delusion. He believed there was a conspiracy against him by the government. So what did he do? He took hostages. Nothing about his delusion would make that action the morally proper thing to do.
To give an analogy, about a year back there was a Denzel Washington movie called John Q., in which Denzel’s character took a hospital hostage in order to get treatment for his son. The impetus for Denzel’s character’s action was real in that case, but his response was still wrong. The same is true here.
Again, though, this case probably never should have gotten this far. If Totorici was incompetent to stand trial, the case should have ended before we get to the above analysis.
Sua
IIRC it was the book PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine by Dr. Sally Satel that made the following points:
– The insanity defence was abused at one time
– Juries today mostly reject the insanity defence
– Even mental health professionals do not have a good record on distinguishing the truly insane from the fakers.
So, the current system doesn’t work well. Mentally ill perps who could benefit from treatment are being thrown in prison along with the true criminals. However, it’s not clear how to improve the system.
Took me a while to realize that you were all talking about this guy. I didn’t see the show, but I was a student there at the time (not one of the hostages, but one was a friend of a friend) and remember the events (if not the names) quite well. Anyway as I remember it, it was the University’s police department that he claimed had intalled the microchips in his penis and brain. There’s no question the guy was looney, but there is a difference between clinical insanity and legal insanity. I think SuaSponte hit the nail on the head (from the court’s point of view anyway) with the reference to John Q. I’m not saying that the law is right, but it is the law and you can’t blame a prosecutor for that.
I went back and re-read the interview with Larry Wiest, the senior ADA. I also heard it on the show. I wasn’t at all impressed with his reasons for going to trial. I didn’t believe him for a second.
I believe the ADA’s meeting with Cheryl Coleman, the prosecutor, is where the system went awry. She knew the case and the defendant well and reccommended a plea out, and was overruled by Wiest. That’s his job, I know, but I think he flubbed this one.
Had Tortorici been committed, he would likely have spent at least as long behind bars as he would have in prison.
Peace,
mangeorge
Sorry for the hijack, but I’m wondering : is the trial prosecutor under any obligation to follow the decisions of his/her superior in the US?
I mean, in this instance, could she have refused to try to get the guy sentenced during the trial? Asking him to be considered as irresponsible, if she really believed so? In other word was she fully responsible for her decision (she could have refused to try to get the guy sentenced, despite the “order” of the DA, but didn’t) or only relatively responsible (she had to obey the DA’s orders, legally…though even in this case I assume she could have refused to plea, so she’s still essentially guilty)
I’m assuming here the guy was actually obviously irresponsible, for the sake of the question…
SuaSponte:
But why does (and/or why should) the law care about your notions of right and wrong if you are possibly nuts when (as I pointed out above) it does not care about your notions of right and wrong if you’re pretty obviously NOT nuts?
If I hand out pot in Washington Square Park, it matters not whether I think I’m spreading “evil weed” and getting away with it, sharing in a harmless practice, or spreading God’s Own Sweet Herb to Awaken Minds…I’m equally busted and equally convicted and the court does not care what I think of the morality of the act, right?
there was a trial involving a black guy who shot some people on a subway (i think this was in texas, i’m not sure).
Anyway, he tried to function as his own lawyer, and claimed that the whole issue was invented so the governor could win a reelection. I don’t know how he was tried as a sane person when he acts like that.
But your example doesn’t contain a delusion, and that’s a big difference. Sua’s example wasn’t of a person who thought God wanted him to kill people (we’ve had loads of those and they never even try to use an insanity defense), but of someone who believed the Archangel Gabriel told him to kill people. If you y convinced a jury not that you thought God wanted you to hand out that pot, but rather that you believed God, in your nightly bedtime conversation, commanded you to do so, you might be acquitted.
AHunter3- I believe you’re getting two issues confused. Competency (in criminal cases) refers to the ability to stand trial- do you know what a trial is, can you assist your attorney, etc. Being found incompetent is not the same as being found to be not responsible. It is quite possible for a person to found incompetent, regain competency later, and be tried at that time. Insanity refers to the mental state at the time of the act- and it is a legal concept, not a medical or psychological one. A person diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia is not automatically unable to tell right from wrong, appreciate the consequences of his actions or control those actions.
Maybe. But the best I remember, commitment in NY requires that a person be a danger to himself or others. So in six months or a year, Tortorici was no longer dangerous (perhaps because he was taking his medication consistently , a fairly big issue with schizophrenics, in my experience), he would have to be released.
I can think of a couple of improvements. Allow a finding of “guilty, but mentally ill” to avoid putting the jury in the position of deciding what to do with a mentally ill defendant who appears to have known that what he did was wrong. Then make it mandatory that such a defendant be confined at a place like Central New York Psychiatric Center (a psychiatric hospital within the prison system) rather than in a regular prison for as long as its beneficial. Eliminates the possibilty of a very soon release after an acquittal due to insanity, and provides treatment.
When determining guilt, notions of right and wrong are not relevant. More accurately, you are not allowed to reject the conventional notions of right and wrong embodied in the criminal laws. In your example, the pot dealer who believes he is selling God’s Own Sweet Herb is aware of the societal determination that selling pot is wrong and chooses to reject that determination. He is not allowed to do that, and therefore goes to jail.
When determining legal sanity, however, notions of right and wrong are highly relevant. Because there, the issue is not whether the individual has rejected conventional notions of right or wrong, but whether he was able to comprehend them in the first place.
Sua
Couldn’t have been Texas. As far as I know, there’s not a single subway in the whole dang state. Harris County has something like 4 million people and not even a tram line, though we’re building one. Public transportation here is awful.
Anyway, it’s like doreen said: all you need to be competent to stand trial is the ability to help your lawyer and the
understanding that you’re the subject of a criminal proceeding. All you need to have been sane at the time of the offense (in Texas, and I believe most states, although I could be mistaken) is a capability to understand the nature of your actions and a knowledge of right from wrong. You can be, to put it in medical terms, completely froot loops and still be sane and competent to stand trial.
New York, Long Island Railroad
Yep. Mineola station, to be precise. Ummm…Colin Ferguson?
You have no idea about Ralph Tortorici for you to make such statements. If I weren’t a follower of Jesus Christ, I would run you out with words. I am Ralph Tortorici’s niece and you have no idea the torment my Uncle went through. You didn’t have a bedroom next to his at grandma’s where you would hear him talking to himself and screaming at people who weren’t even there. My Uncle had a mental illness; he was not in any campacity able to understand that the police would come get him after he held the class hostage. His entire point of doing it was to speak to president. My Uncle was convinced the government was out to get him and that through surgieries that He had to fix a deformity he was born with, he was convinced they planted a tracking device in him. He was paranoid and suffered from schitzophrenia, aka attack from the devil who is only out to kill steal and destroy. I remember the day he left; I was a child and I was outside with my sister and somehow I knew and I remember saying to him, “Uncle Ralph, don’t take the gun…don’t take the gun uncle Ralph” Think about the things you say again when you just want to attack people like the prosector did to my Uncle. Think again, 'cuse it could of been your family people have no idea what they are talking about. Look out for the book to come and the movie to come A Crime of Insanity by Kari Prabhakar. Good day to you and may the Lord Jesus Christ bless you.
And I want to add; my Uncle Ralph was a beautiful, loving man; the only one out of all three brothers, who was my mother’s best friend. My Uncle Ralph watched my sister and I all the time for my single mother. I remember even one time he brought us to an interview he had. He was truly a wonderful Uncle and I remember nothing bad about him or his character. These are the moments I hold onto and these are what I think of when I think about my Uncle Ralph. He is in Heaven as I know He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The god of this world, the devil, will take a strong hold on any one who allows Him to. Believe and follow the Lord Jesus Christ and have life.
ou have no idea about Ralph Tortorici for you to make such statements. If I weren’t a follower of Jesus Christ, I would run you out with words. I am Ralph Tortorici’s niece and you have no idea the torment my Uncle went through. You didn’t have a bedroom next to his at grandma’s where you would hear him talking to himself and screaming at people who weren’t even there. My Uncle had a mental illness; he was not in any campacity able to understand that the police would come get him after he held the class hostage. His entire point of doing it was to speak to president. My Uncle was convinced the government was out to get him and that through surgieries that He had to fix a deformity he was born with, he was convinced they planted a tracking device in him. He was paranoid and suffered from schitzophrenia, aka attack from the devil who is only out to kill steal and destroy. I remember the day he left; I was a child and I was outside with my sister and somehow I knew and I remember saying to him, “Uncle Ralph, don’t take the gun…don’t take the gun uncle Ralph” Think about the things you say again when you just want to attack people like the prosector did to my Uncle. Think again, 'cuse it could of been your family people have no idea what they are talking about. Look out for the book to come and the movie to come A Crime of Insanity by Kari Prabhakar. Good day to you and may the Lord Jesus Christ bless you.
And I want to add; my Uncle Ralph was a beautiful, loving man; the only one out of all three brothers, who was my mother’s best friend. My Uncle Ralph watched my sister and I all the time for my single mother. I remember even one time he brought us to an interview he had. He was truly a wonderful Uncle and I remember nothing bad about him or his character. These are the moments I hold onto and these are what I think of when I think about my Uncle Ralph. He is in Heaven as I know He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The god of this world, the devil, will take a strong hold on any one who allows Him to. Believe and follow the Lord Jesus Christ and have life.
“He’s not the SUNY-Albany gunman. He’s the terrified man reaching out to try to get his life back.” Matthew Tortorici (Ralph Tortorici’s younger brother)
If anyone is interested in this topic, please keep in mind that except for the last three, all the posts in this thread are from October 2002.