I’m sympathetic to your premise, but I don’t agree that “It’s too low a threshold” boils down to “It would be too much effort to explore “why” someone did XYZ.” Instead, it boils down to “if we allowed people to escape conviction by claiming that they were compelled by mental illness, then every drug addict, alcoholic, survivor of child abuse, or sufferer of other PTSD would be immune from prosecution.” Since I’m going to guess that nearly all convicted criminals had some trauma in their lives, this is an unworkable standard if “legal insanity” is to have any practical meaning.
As stated, though, I am sympathetic to your premise. I do believe that people in prison should receive counseling and treatment (and some do), even if their crimes are so horrific that they won’t ever be released. Through such opportunities for growth and healing, we should absolutely be trying to learn how people end up that way and how we can prevent it from happening further. I think that “just get him out of our sight, blame the devil, call him a monster, and rest assured we have finally vanquished evil” is akin to blowing up a crime scene rather than looking for clues as to what happened, and is a waste of an opportunity.
I haven’t followed the case, either. I just tried to catch up, by looking online, but I haven’t found anything about his “reason” for doing it. Did he say anything about why he planned and did it? Did e think he was fighting little green men from Mars or something?
I can’t imagine that life in a mental hospital is pleasant. No picnic, as they say, unlike the prison in upstate NY where officers provided ground beef (seasoned with hacksaw blades) for a barbecue.
Is the phrase “loony as a jaybird” an oxymoron? Maybe he is loony as a loon, or maybe jaybirdy as a jaybird.
Something I question about our legal system (in some kinds of cases) is having a separate penalty phase to the trial, yet using the same jury. As jury is supposed to come into a case with no prior knowledge or preconceived thoughts about it. But, when the same jury begins the penalty phase, of course they know a whole lot about the case because, duh, they just finished hearing and deciding the first part of the case. It’s hard to imagine that their minds are a “blank slate” on what the penalty should be. They may all have a pretty good idea in their minds already what they’re going to decide.
In charging him with 2 counts of murder for each stiff, were the two counts organized as a “less serious” and “more serious” allegations? If the jury chose to convict, was their choice to convict on one or the other of these counts in each case? Or did they convict him on both counts in each case? If so, how does that work?
So the question is still open (and I acknowledge I’ve only skimmed this thread so far): Do either the jury or the judge now have the option to put him into a loony bin (or would that be a jaybird bin?) for life, or for the foreseeable future, or does he necessarily go to jail (and maybe death row) now?
Colorado isn’t the only jurisdiction that does this sort of thing. (I lived there for 15 years, by the way.) I think that charging someone with murder should be sufficient. He’s going to get convicted of one charge and not the other when they’re effectively the same thing?
“Well, I had a great job offer in Denver, but it turns out that there’s this obscure law I found whilst leafing through the Colorado law books that I don’t like, so… guess I’ll move somewhere else.”
The defense is entitled to present evidence during the penalty phase that they don’t during the trial phase, including mitigating factors. The jury is entitled - indeed, they need - to consider the facts of the crime in deciding what penalty to impose. And the jury has just sat thru a detailed presentation of the facts of the case sufficient for them to decide that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
In order for the jury to have access to the same facts, it would be necessary to go thru the whole jury selection process, re-try the case, re-prove guilt, and then pick up where they left off when he was convicted in the penalty case. I don’t see the advantage in picking out a new jury for the penalty phase.
Either the new jury knows as much as the original jury did about the case, which they need to do to decide the penalty, or they don’t, in which case they are less well-qualified to decide the penalty.
Do you think locking him up in an insane asylum is going to discourage the next schizophrenic from going on a rampage? And I’m not claiming that killing him will either. If you know how to discourage murderers, please tell us. Including predicting with absolute certainty that someone with a mental illness will be a danger to himself or others.
We all have broken brains, some more broken than others. We have to draw the line somewhere, and the knowing right from wrong line seems a reasonable one to me.
I didn’t follow his trial, but didn’t he booby-trap his apartment, and didn’t the bomb squad have to disarm the booby-traps before the police could enter it? Sounds like someone who knew what he was doing. Not insane at all.
Oh yes, indeed he did. He had quite elaborately booby-trapped his apartment with the hopes that it would kill anyone who came looking for him there, not only threatening the life of any law enforcement officers who came looking for him, but also threatening the other residents of the apartment building who would have experienced possible injury from the explosion. According to local media, there was enough ordinance there to blow up a good portion of the apartment building.
My younger son and his girlfriend were in the adjacent theatre that night. They heard the shots and the screaming and a few stray bullets penetrated the wall into their theatre in the front up near the screen. I’m beyond thankful they were safe, but my family and I knew some of the victims, the injured ones, not the ones who died.
I feel sorry for this young man, so full of promise and so ill, but legally, he has shown that he was sane enough to formulate and carry out an elaborate plan with the stated intent to kill other human beings. The jury got it right.
I’m a bit too close to this situation to trust my feelings on what his punishment should be. He is demonstrably mentally ill and that should have some bearing on the outcome, but what he did was so heinous, so coldly and carefully planned, that I will not cry for him if the death sentence is handed down.
The only bit of remorse he’s ever expressed over the killings is that he told one of the psychiatrists that he really didn’t intend to kill a child, that she was collateral damage. By omission, that statement tells us that he thoroughly did intend to kill and maim everyone else that he shot.
The late neurologist, Jonathan Pincus, was interested in deviant behavior and studied brains of criminals. He requested Jeffrey Dahmer’s brain but the parents fought him and won, part of the court transcript is below and it’s quite interesting. Mention is made of “pop research” and aski g for Dr Pincus’s “vitae”. Pincus was no pop psychologist, he was a professor at Georgetown and a physician of note. Can’t say I’d want that brain lying around my lab, though.
www.tornadohills.com/dahmer/brain.htm
We have a motion brought on by Mr. Fennig on behalf of Ms. Flint to have Jeffrey Dahmer’s brain, … FENNIG: Pincus. THE COURT: There it is, Jonathan Pincus.
I find it hard to believe that anyone really thinks this guy wasn’t batshit crazy. That’s my opinion. Also that mental health care had clearly failed him.
I also think that people want an explanation for something horrible. People want to believe that insanity prevents planning. So it he had to be sane. As if sane people really ever plan out something like this, and booby trap their apartments and all of the other horridness, short of war zones or the zombie apocalypse. So he’s guilty! Neat, tidy, rational, compartmentalized.
No, we don’t do enough for mental illness in this country.
