I find this impossible to reconcile. You would let someone off who stole to prevent themselves starving (something with which I have no real issue), yet, if someone is ‘laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind’ that he does ‘not know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong’(the M’Naughten test), you would either send them down for life or execute them?
Insanity pleas simply don’t work, because the bar is set so high (the burden is also on the defendant to prove he is insane). The ratio of successful insanity pleas to arrests is 1 to 27,000 in California and 1 to 11,000 in New York. Given the incredibly high rates of mental illness amongst prisoners, it’s a very very hard to prove defense. It exists for the extreme cases, where the defendant genunely did not know what he did was wrong, or was unable to stop himself doing the crime. To punish someone in that situation is to undercut the entire basis of culpability in our system.
That’s the way it struck me too. With heavy overtones between ‘saving him’ and ‘justifying.’
No matter how you slice it, her kid was actively responsible for vicious, deliberate murder. He wasn’t the brighest candle on the birthday cake, but he still conspired to slaughter innocent strangers, en masse.
Timothy McVeigh chose to be executed for his part in the slaughter, which was convenient because his ‘martyrdom’ impressed no one. He started out blind, self-righteous and vicious and died the same way. Good riddance to hateful rubbish.
Nichols is still alive but actively hated–for ample reason. I’m not suprised his mom is reeling from the aftermath. If nothing else, it’s a hell of a stretch to embrace one’s own child as someone capable of cold, impersonal mass murder. She loves her son, and she raised him. Pretty hard to understand, much less embrace, a monster you once bore in your own body, then loved and guided as baby, child and beyond.
Nichol’s mother is trapped in the nightmare her son made too. The Asperberger’s ploy is as ridiculous as it is pitiful. Her son is mass murderer. She doesn’t want him to be hated, but it’s way too late.
Well, sure, you can argue anything you want if you conveniently try to change the meanings of words to mean something other than what they really mean.
Yes, criminals should take responsibility for their actions, but you should take responsibility for not making up bullshit claims like that.
Insanity is a legal defense specifically because it means someone who had no capacity to stop themselves at the time. For those rare occasions when it is legit, it is a necessary and moral defense, and one that leads to forced treatment that typically outlasts whatever prison sentence they would have served if they were held culpable for the crime. Numbnuts like yourself trying to switch the word around to mean something completely fucking ass different just so you can use your incorrect definition to try to argue against the appropriateness of the real definition are just as bad as the mother in the story you referenced: You both rearrange facts to justify yourself so you don’t have to face up to reality.
Let’s assume, for the nonce, that you are correct, and that anyone committing a murder is absolutely certain to be apprehended (ftr, it’s a good thing this is a written medium, because there’s no way I could keep a straight face if I had to say that in person.) It still does not follow that someone committing murder must be insane. It is entirely possible that they are merely stupid.
Also, if you want to define insanity by ignoring both clinical and legal definitions of the word, you have just defined the word into total meaninglessness, as those are the only two definitions of the word that have any legitimate value.
You are not required to tell an employer that you have Asperger’s. And there is no reason to do so unless you are asking for specific job accommodations which you need because of your disability. And (broadly and briefly) your employer is only required to provide said accommodations if you qualify under Section 504.
Well said. Speaking for myself, I do not hate Nichols. I simply desire that he be found guilty, and that his flame be extinguished for his part in the commission of the crime.
No blame for a Mother loving her offspring whatsoever. Justice still needs to be done.
Not quite. I am married to a former DA and that was not his experience.
In that business, the running joke-that-isn’t-really-a-joke is that everybody involved (cops, lawyers, judges) thanks God that most criminals are stupid because they know damn well they only catch the slow and stupid ones.
There are unsolved murders every day. I know of one poster on this very board who had a family member murdered and the suspect was never even brought to trial. He absolutely got away with murder.
It ain’t Law & Order out there. The lions usually only bring down the antelope with the limp.