Jared Loughner Ruled Incompetent

Piotr is going to be effing pissed when he finds out he's considered a "normal liberal."

 

Bin Laden would not have been able to stand trial either. Good thing the Seals took decision out of courts hands.

 

I was thinking about calling him a flaming, tree-hugging, whale-saving bastard, but he would probably take that as a compliment.

 

Just to clarify something, Loughner was found mentally unfit to stand trial. That's not the same thing as finding him not guilty of his crimes by reason of insanity. This was not a trial defense.

And for anyone who thinks he's faking: According to the article in the New York Times, a Bureau of Prisons psychologist who was appointed by the prosecution interviewed him 12 times over nine hours before diagnosing him as schizophrenic. A psychiatrist in private practice who was appointed by the judge interviewed him five times over seven hours concluded that he appeared to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. Both of them said he was delusional. The psychiatrist, according to the article, said that Loughner showed no signs of faking mental illness. And after reviewing videotapes of the experts' interviews with Loughner, the judge agreed with them that he was unfit for trial. So you've got the opinions of two experts -- neither of whom was hired by the defense -- 17 interviews over 16 hours, and a judge, all pointing to the conclusion that he's mentally unfit for trial. I'll concede it's possible that they're all wrong, but if that's your opinion, I'd like to know what it's based on.

 

Up the Proletariat.

 

Because you're talking about a pretty fundamental human right -- the right to determine what goes in one's own body. Setting that aside shouldn't be done lightly.

 

Another fundamental right is the right not to be murdered. I understand this is a legal process and he has to be given time, but how does a clinically insane person get four months to fuck around? Are they anticipating a suddenly sound decision to come out of his brain? Just seems like a long time, that's all.

 

That has to either be your screensaver or your desktop background.

 

Some of the logic on why Loughner must be sane seems somewhat circular.

People are saying that it was such a bad act that he must have known it was bad. Is there some middle ground of crime where you can accept that the person was insane? Part of this may be that it is difficult to conceptualize the idea of not knowing that killing seven people is wrong. But I once met somebody who did a heinous, unspeakable crime and was released to a halfway home a few years later upon gaining her sanity back. There is no way that the person I sat and spoke with was the same person who committed the crime. And yet a great many people would have wanted her executed, which would have been an absolute tragedy. It really shook me, and I wish more people could have that experience.

To me, the more heinous the crime, the greater the likelihood that the person was mentally ill/insane. Others here seem to feel differently. I have seen it, on other threads, posted flat-out: "If she was sane enough to commit the crime, she's sane enough to be executed."

I don't even know what that means.

 

I think what's so difficult about "understanding" insanity is that the brain of an insane person is wired differently at a level far more fundamental than we, the sane*, can grasp. We can't possibly hope to understand what it's like to be insane. So we say, "Well, he had to know it was wrong," because there's no part of us that can grasp not actually *knowing* that killing someone is wrong. We can't get that.

But that's the way it is.

*-Well, in theory, anyway.

 

I don't buy into the 'worse the crime, the crazier the person must be' argument, although that does seem to be the way society is moving in general.

To me, there are just some bad, evil people out there who understand quite sanely and quite lucidly what they are doing is wrong, unlawful and inhumane---and they do it anyway, sometimes with great pleasure.

I don't think that's the case in this one--it would appear there is a legit lack of sanity here. But, anytime someone shoots up multiple victims--can't come to grips with buying that blanket statement.

And to the fundamental rights comment, you may still get your fundamental rights--but when it's clear you shoot up double digits of people, killing most, well, maybe those rights should get administered a little more expediently.

 

No blanket statement being made at all. Would never argue from that position. I very carefully used the phrase "greater likelihood." I'm talking probabilities, not absolutes.