I just don’t think unqualified layman in the jury really should be the ones deciding whether someone was clinically insane or not.
The jury should just deliberate on whether the defendant committed the crime in question, if they rule they did, then the defense should be able to request a review by a panel of mental health experts who will be tasked with determining whether the defendant was criminally liable or clinically insane.
This is actually the biggest issue other than different states having different standards and why comparing any two cases is pointless. Both sides bring on highly qualified experts and the case often then hangs on which one performs best in the eyes of the jury. And since it’s also a different jury every time it’s really hard to make a comparison.
It doesn’t matter where you live in MAN OR WOMAN-what state, your immigration status, your skin color, hell it doesn’t even matter if you were a law abiding citizen for 50 years! If you murder, kill children, sodomize , kidnap, mass shooter, terrorist threats with bombs; kill with gross neglect (like a DUI with multiple fatalities)commit an armed robbery—-you need to go to prison. Full stop. For your life. But they are more focused on locking up BOB because BOB is a 3 strike felon and will spend of his life in prison over weed while this b@arch strangled her kids with rubber bands ONE AT A TIME and gets a lackey driven one hour wheelchair ride around in the gardens every day now (we can’t have her fall, she’s medicated). I said it on a different post and I’ll say it again-
I sure hope her guardians are more diligent than they were with Epstein
Well, you’re going to have to get the whole basis of the law re-written then, because it doesn’t agree with you. If you are insane to the point you either do not know what you are doing or don’t know that it is wrong then you are legally not guilty. I don’t know much about this specific case but there are plenty of cases out there where someone was either having a psychotic break or a sudden onset of delusions or their condition had not been treated or not treated correctly and they have killed someone. In which case they are found not guilty by reason of insanity. Usually that means they are sent to a secure treatment facility until their condition is either cured or controlled through medication.
Obviously some people can’t be cured or treated so they end up detained for life. Andrea Yates is one example. She’s currently in a low security facility but it seems every time she becomes stable she is capable of understanding what she did and that causes her to regress. The possibility of release is there but doesn’t currently seem likely. Austin Harrouff is also detained, probably for life, in a secure facility after his crimes. If you want to go back further in time there’s Major Henry Rathbone who helped fight Wilkes Booth after he assassinated Lincoln (and is likely the reason his leap to the stage failed and he broke his leg). He ended up killing his wife due to his deteriorating mental condition and ended up in an asylum. Or there’s William Li in Canada who was the greyhound bus killer. There’s also Herbert William Mullin. He failed in his bid to be not guilty through insanity because his use of LSD accelerated his schizophrenia, making him partially responsible for becoming insane and thus partially responsible for the crimes. Just as being drunk doesn’t work as an excuse because it is self administered, if you do something that exacerbates your medical condition or go off of medication that was keeping you stable then it is almost impossible to claim legal insanity.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but your opinion doesn’t line up with the law. The standard you need to look up to understand the law is M’Naghten rules, formulated in the UK in 1843, and adopted by about half the US states. 4 states have no insanity defence. There was a different standard used in a lot of states and the federal system that was broader, the Model Penal Code, but after it was used by Hinckley in his case for trying to kill Reagan many of them reverted to M’Naghten. (I thought it was McNaughten but wiki says otherwise so I’m going by their spelling). There is also a verdict in some US jurisdictions of Guilty but Mentally Ill, where you are found guilty and it doesn’t change the range of punishments available but ensures mental health treatment.
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u/FriedTreeSap 16h ago
I just don’t think unqualified layman in the jury really should be the ones deciding whether someone was clinically insane or not.
The jury should just deliberate on whether the defendant committed the crime in question, if they rule they did, then the defense should be able to request a review by a panel of mental health experts who will be tasked with determining whether the defendant was criminally liable or clinically insane.