Secret Squirrel, in light of recent events in Tucson,Arizona, has pondered such things as the Insanity Defense.....the act of committing murder and then claiming to be........insane....or crazy,or should that perhaps be,crazy, like a fox?Stating they are,or being adjugded to be,insane,gets them off,and eventually,many times they get out,released from,a ,and any particular, mental institution........supposedly cured,cured by words,cured by so much smoke, much as a ham is,perhaps.........or not,and much more than likely not.What cure is there for insanity?A cure implies a disease, but talk,discussion, is not a cure for any disease.How does one cure insanity?Is there a cure for insanity?Ponder? Once released, outed,they are free to do it all again. In Canada,the famous bus attack beheading,Vince Weiguang Li,he's been judged insane,the psychiatrist said that Li performed the attack because God's voice told him McLean(his victim) was a force of evil and was about to execute him. The presiding judge accepted the diagnosis, and ruled that Li was not criminally responsible for the murder,so at present date there's even yet talk of releasing him, and what is anybody to do, but,upon his release,wait for him to receive his next message from God?
To excute ,when convicted, as being dangerous, if not insane,they are effectively removed from society,society is being protected,but if released, is there a cure for insanity, is there a change in those not insane,but released then they are still dangerous and can act again, so is it not better to execute them for the good of society.If insane,are they not then also dangerous,and can act again,so execution is directly for the good of society. Daniel Edgar Sickles, colorful and controversial American politician, Union general in the American Civil War, and diplomat.
In 1859, in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, Sickles shot and killed the district attorney of the District of Columbia, Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key, whom Sickles had discovered was having an affair with Sickles's young wife, Teresa,his lawyer argued,for the first time,that Sickles(who was himself a notoriously unfaithful rake and notably adulterously unfaithful) had been driven insane by his wife's infidelity, and thus was out of his mind when he shot Key.And so the plea was temporary insanity, and it brought victory for the defense. Sickles was acquitted.Acquitted, acquitted for being insane at the time,even yet if it had all been planned,as it was, the duration of the time of insanity was irrelevant.Interesting.
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's lawyers were court appointed, but he eventually dismissed them because they wanted to plead insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, and Kaczynski did not believe he was insane,but one sees the insane plea,as an escape, an avoidance of the death penalty,a ploy, not a cure, not a correction,not a punishment,for how does one cure insanity,not being a disease as such, there is no anti-biotic.Do you believe insanity is curable with..............words.............reason.........logic?There is no cure for insanity, and it is not a disease, and it is certainly not an excuse,nor should it be accepted as such, for murders. But it is.
Although attempts have been made to prove that most American Presidential,and other political assassinations and attempts ,were politically motivated actions, carried out by rational men, not all such assassinations and attempts have been undertaken for truly political reasons.Some have been perpetrated by people of questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane.Andrew Jackson's attempted assassin,Richard Lawrence, was judged insane.Theodore Roosevelt's, John F. Shrank, also.But is insanity an excuse? They have successfully commited murder,directed at those who are their focus, just as others who commit murder have a focus at any particular time.Those NOT judged insane, are frequently executed for their crimes, so they cannot further offend. Those who are judged as being insane, are,in fact, frequently released.In short it is better to be, and to be judged, insane,it is an out.But should it continue to be so? No, let the crime be the dictate of the punishment, be it whatever it is to be determined to be faced, such as for murder,particularly multiples, life or death sentence irrespective.If life, if insane, life in a mental institution, if death, if insane, then death it is also.An eye for an eye, let the punishment fit the crime,those who have committed murder, are of another kind,and society at large must be protected from them.They have to be entirely removed from society, so as to keep it safe, or else put to death, and so society is once again protected,but that sparing society the great expense of incarceration.Should insanity be an allowable defense and escape from justice? No.But it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment