So, James Holmes wasn't insane

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Remember the guy that shot up the movie house in Aurora, Colorado?)
“Not nuts” said his jury.

I love our judicial system:

  • someone can imagine himself an arch villain and plot an assault like this one, but he’s not crazy
  • he can kill 12 people, and get 24 counts of murder
  • he can get 140 counts of attempted murder for the 70 people he hurt but failed to kill.

My heart does truly go out to the families of those involved, and to the community. This was a horrible thing and their pain is not to be minimized. But everything I know about the case (which is less than the jury got, admittedly) tells me this cat was fucking insane, even if not legally so, and the majority of blame rests with a society that stigmatizes mental illness and makes treatment well-nigh unobtainable for those who need it most.

He’s evidently eligible for the death penalty now. I’m normally opposed to CP, but it would be a mercy for him I think. Fuck people. Nobody wants to see past their nose anymore.

You’re going to see conflicting feelings in the above post. Deal with it.

2

Great Sun Jester, what do you think the term “legally insane” means?

3

Can the jury sentence him to life in a mental hospital? From what I’ve heard, he does seem genuinely insane and would be far better off there as opposed to death row.

4

The jury decided that he knew what he was doing was wrong. The basis of legal insanity is the idea that a person may commit a wrongful act without knowing that he has done so. He didn’t think he was killing aliens or demons, he thought he was killing human beings, intended to do so, and thus legally had committed murder. Being as loony as a jaybird is not a defense to willfully committing a crime.

5

I haven’t really kept up with this story but how could he get charged with 24 counts of murder if he killed 12 people?

6

I know I butchered the term. I know he could only cop a “nuts” plea if he thought he was washing dishes when in reality he was slaughtering movie goers. I’m just incensed that The System pretends to give a damn about serious mental illness by having this token option for a jury, and then sets an all-but-impossible standard for it. That, and we are asked to not even consider the warped perspective of someone in the throes of a protracted delusional state of mind. I am not saying the guy should be out on the streets–he’s damned dangerous, clearly. It just seems wrong to me that he’s held to the laws of a reality that he was not a part of.

7

Some nuance under Colorado law.

8

Mentally ill does not equal insane.

So in your world, mentally ill people get a pass for certain behavior like murder?

9

What makes you think Teh System gives a damn? Even people who qualify as legally insane are often convicted and no one cares. Given incontrovertible evidence that a person had no idea what they were doing, combined with a sympathetic jury, a defendant may be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Otherwise neither the system nor the public in general give a rat’s ass about it.

10

I have a major problem with this sort of thing. It’s ridiculous to be able to charge someone with multiple crimes that amount to the same thing.

That said, while I personally believe that Holmes was insane, I can’t find it in myself to argue with the jury’s decision. They were there, they heard the evidence, and they’re far better positioned to make the call than I am.

11

Each death was charged under two different Colorado laws - one for killing “with intent” and one for killing “with extreme indifference to life”.

For those of you who watched the reading of the verdicts and wonder why all of the “Part B” sections were left blank, Part B pretty much said, “If you found the defendant not guilty, was it for any reason other than insanity?”

12

Isn’t the legal concept of insanity rooted in old Victorian notions of lunacy? Specifically, the idea that insane people were basically animals who didn’t know right from wrong?

A better system would discard legal insanity, and judges or juries would be allowed to consider mental problems as a possible mitigating factor.

13

I really think you’re looking at it wrong, and missing the distinction.

Maybe every person who commits a violent crime on another is “insane” on some level - I think, in very general strokes, you can’t inflict disfiguring, crippling or lethal injury to another person without being broken on some level. So stretched that way, every violent criminal is eligible for a “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense.

The question is usually what’s been put forth in the Holmes trial - it’s accepted that someone has to be nuts to some degree to do the strange and deadly things he did, but did his actions stem from genuine insanity, or from malice he could clearly distinguish as leading to illegal and harmful acts?

If he had gone on a rampage in a street battling monsters only he could see… it’s one thing. But the enormous level of plotting, planning, and careful action goes beyond such warped perception of the world - or at least the jury so thinks. He may well be nuts… but that is not excuse for his actions.

I think the way the law presents these issues is warped. Someone taken down in the street firing weapons all directions at demons and monsters, and killing some number of people, is definitely “guilty” of the acts and must face the consequences. Calling it “not guilty BROI” masks that they can be subject to far harsher, longer-term (probably lifetime) consequences. IANAL and don’t understand the nuances of how these laws developed, but “Guilty, but with the special circumstances of insanity” would seem to better fit these cases.

After all, there is not the slightest shred of doubt that he did all these things, advance planning, preparation and carefully staged execution included. So it’s not as if the alternative to let him walk was ever on the table.

14

Yup. That’s exactly what I said. In fact, you could’ve quoted me saying as much right here:

15

[QUOTE=Diceman]
Isn’t the legal concept of insanity rooted in old Victorian notions of lunacy? Specifically, the idea that insane people were basically animals who didn’t know right from wrong?
[/QUOTE]

I am not a criminal lawyer, but from what I recall from law school, and from poking around the interent, legal insanity generally applies when the person can’t distinguish right from wrong. In other words, Holmes could successfully claim insanity if Holmes didn’t understand that shooting those people was wrong (perhaps, hypothetically, he believed that, like in video games or movies, they would just come back to life).

I haven’t followed the case closely, but one way to discount this type of defense is to show that the perpetrator had taken steps to avoid detection (thereby demonstrating that he knew what he was doing was wrong, or at least would get him into trouble).

This is distinguished from another concept of legal insanity (generally discarded) which says that a person is legally insane if their actions were the result of an “irresistible impulse”. In other words, Holmes would be considered insane if his mental problems compelled him to kill those people.

This second concept seems more apt to the facts in the case; Holmes was deranged, and his derangement compelled him to concoct an elaborate and murderous scheme. But, as I mentioned, it has generally been discarded, for the reason that it is too easy to escape conviction by showing that one’s behavior stemmed from mental illness. A pretty famous example was the “Twinkie defense” used to defend Dan White (which did not say that twinkies made him kill Harvey Milk and George Moscone, but rather that White’s deep depression led him to binge on junk food and commit murder, both anathema to his normal functioning personality).

In other words, society recognizes that people who do detestable things are not “right in the head”, but we’ve decided not to make that the basis for claiming insanity. It’s too low a threshold.

This is the system in place. There is a separate penalty phase, where the jury votes on whether to impose the death penalty. During this time, mitigating factors (including mental illness) are considered.

16

NM…Moriarty answered it.

17

Thank you. I was having trouble putting my finger on it, but that’s what has me ranting like a dickhead (I mean, apart from I AM a dickhead and there’s really no other way for me to rant). “It’s too low a threshold” boils down to “It would be too much effort to explore “why” someone did XYZ.” In this case–well, no shit Holmes was the trigger puller. The trial was just a formality. But he hurt a lot of people in the worst way, and it might be somehow disrespectful to society if we consider his actions were the result of a broken brain–and maybe we can/should fix that–in much the same way falling down is the result of a broken leg, or blindness the result of diabetes. So just get him out of our sight, blame the devil, call him a monster, and rest assured we have finally vanquished evil. And try to act surprised when another schizophrenic goes on a rampage. Wish we knew more about those people and what can be done to protect ourselves from them.

18

You know, when I first heard about this case, my impulse was that he was legally insane and should be sentenced to a mental hospital.

When the trial came the evidence presented did paint a portrait of someone who, at times, was batshit crazy, yet, at plenty of other times was perfectly lucid and rational, knowing what he was doing and planning it carefully.

In those no-crazy times, he could have stopped. He could have gotten rid of everything if it was the product of his batshit crazy periods. However, it was my impression that he did the planning and the ordering during his lucid periods. His ordering of protective equipment for himself was particularly damning to me.

The trial left me with the impression of someone who didn’t, couldn’t have done this in his batshit crazy periods — wasn’t mentally together enough to have accomplished this plan with all the steps he took. The trial left me with the impression that the murder spree was the product of his lucid periods — that he sat around thinking about this, planning this, knowing what he was doing and enjoying the feeling it gave him.

In the end, I changed my mind. Yes, I do think he’s mentally ill as a schizophrenic. No, I don’t think the murder was the product of some kind of psychotic break where he didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t know that it was both illegal and morally wrong. That I would have voted not guilty by reason of insanity for. But, after what I saw of the trial, I could not, in good conscience, have voted him not guilty. (Though I would not vote for the death penalty.)

Just my take from what I’ve seen.

19

The Aurora, Colorado monster may be batshit crazy but he knows right from wrong. That means he’s not LEGALLY insane.

20

Then don’t live in Colorado.