Is nobody responsible for their own actions anymore? Is every single criminal retarded or mentally ill or physically debilitated? Do we have to make excuses for everything? And of COURSE they’re all good people except for the disease that allowed someone else to manipulate them into committing a crime. Yeah, that’s it. It’s inconcievable that a criminal committed a crime, it was the disease that made him do it. :rolleyes:
What a bunch of bullshit. I don’t care if he drools on himself and licks the paint off the walls while he talks to his 15 other personalities. He killed 168 people. There is NO excuse. So quit trying to make them for everybody. A murderer is a murderer is a murderer.
Very stupid, but at this point they’re at the “say anything” stage, and it’s still not going to work. If a court ruled this, it’d be a much bigger reason for outrage.
You must have missed the memo, bro. Everything from harsh toilet training to my evil stepmommy made me eat those brussel sprouts is plausible.
Before we get out the tar and feathers for the lawyers, let’s bear in mind that in many cases, a dozen dimwits have to embrace the shit-laden crock put before them in the court. If more good men and women would rise up and cry “ENOUGH!” and send these asshats back from whence them came for trotting out these silly concepts, then it would be a self-resolving issue, no?
Um, Airman, dude. It’s his mother for Christ’s sake! Even if she was qualified to determine if her son had Asperger’s and if it had an effect on his life, she’s clearly not in a position to objectively do so. You want to discuss to what degree mental illness makes someone culpable for a crime? Fine, I’d love to participate. But this is so not the case to use to prove your point! Zounds!
Of course, there are also the psychologists and psychiatrists that will say in court that anything is a sign of a syndrome or a disorder or an illness. They shouldbe tarred and feathered as well.
OK, so let’s discuss it. Let’s go from the Twinkie Defense to Starkweather’s alleged mental retardation to the two dudes from In Cold Blood to the current bullshit use of this asinine defense.
If someone was taught right from wrong they have no excuse. If someone was not taught right from wrong they have no excuse. This is a binary sulution set here. Either they were or were not taught right from wrong and either way there is no excuse. Yet for some people it is perfectly justifiable to claim all kinds of diseases or make a few up to get people off or save them from the hangman, to which I call bullshit. This is just an example of the great lengths people will go to to defer responsibility to someone else. I’m not buying.
Dewey, you can even use the little chain-link globe icon on the reply toolbar so you don’t have to type it all in manually.
On topic, autism has gotten to be the new trendy diagnosis. Soon this will pass and sucrose saturation or troublesome impulse disorder or electricity poisoning will be to blame. As long as we lock them up at the end of the day, I don’t much care what bullshit people want to spew to try and justify their crimes. Freedom of stupidity and self-delusion, and all that.
Thanks to both of you. I’ve used both quotes and links before, but it never occurred to me that you could make a quote linkable. And sorry for the hijack.
If he/she is guilty, I don’t care if they’re insane. That’s something for the sociologists/psychologists/psychiatrists to play with, not me.
As an aside, anyone who thinks that they can get away with committing a capital crime is clearly insane, and that’s why the insanity (in particular “temporary insanity”) defense is a load. Of course you’re nutters! That’s why you did it! A sane person does not murder another human being (murder being defined as unlawful killing, not self-defense or war, which are other matters entirely).