Just Don't Get It

[abide]

I am not a professional in the medical field, nor in the area of mental illness.Why is it when someone kill like the man in Colorado, you find lawyers trying to plead insanity. If somone is mentally ill, why don't they ever go under a bus, sint on a train track and get killed. Why does the mentally iill presumably always kill others. Since a persona is mentally ill, he won't know the difference or does he. The whole thing boggles my mind.

To make all the sophisticated booby traps in an apartment to my mind is not the work of a mentally ill person. With this kind of ability, he should be in the arm forces. I am still baffled.

 

[WIP]

The part that confuses me is this. If someone can be found "innocent" by an insanity plea, it means they were not in control of their faculties and not aware of what they were doing, right? If this is true, then why do they try so hard to evade law enforcement and cover their crime?

 

[farouk]

Part of the answer may lie in that according to secularist thinking, there is no such thing as indwelling sin and so experts decide that a 'normal', secular person, supposedly untrammeled with extreme ideas, 'wouldn't do' such things. Therefore they are in secularists' terms, insane.

 

[gefsgirl]

The reason the justice system is the way it is, is that secular society denies the existence of "sin".

They cannot say that it is the way the Bible says it is (that man is sinful), because they have declared that the Bible is just a book of fairy tales and myths.

Therefore they have created this whole theory around "insanity" to explain why people do crazy and wicked things. Not to say that sinfulness is not insane, because it is. But to say that a person is not responsible for their actions because they are insane is wrong. They are still responsible, however, they have lost control. Sin has power over them. That's what the Bible says too. It is not either/or. It is both. Sin is a choice, but it also has power over the sinner.

So, yes, the Colorado shooter is a sinner. He had a choice. But he also became powerless because sin became his master.

In a nutshell: Yes, he should plead insanity, because sin is insane! But that should not effect his punishment!

Oh, and another thing - being insane does not mean you cannot be smart and scheming. I think there are plenty of examples of that in the Bible too. Intelligence and wickedness are not incompatible.

I am looking at the book of Ecclesiastes...

Ch 8:7 Since no man knows the future,
who can tell him what is to come?
8 No man has power over the wind to contain it;
so no one has power over the day of his death.
As no one is discharged in time of war,
so wickedness will not release those who practice it.

(NIV - emphasis mine)

 

[Christ_empowered]

As a former mental patient, I can tell you: a lot of psychiatry is godless nonsense and dogma. The insanity defense itself varies from country to country, and within the US, from state to state. Some require evidence that you were totally incapacitated in terms of moral judgment at the time of the crime(s), others I think will accept a long psychiatric history and some indication of very serious problems at the time of the crime. Something like that.

Anyway, think about it: if "mental illness" really was a brain disease, you'd go to a real doctor. They'd do lab work, brain scans, that sort of thing. If your brain disease made you commit a crime, they'd be able to back it up with some tangible evidence that yes, indeed, this physical defect caused or contributed to a crime. Over the hundreds of years that we've had various forms of the insanity defense (and psychiatry), none of those things have happened. Its just not going to happen, because most "mental illness" can actually be explained in terms of psycho-social problems and sin.

Personally, I was given a modified, modern day "temporary insanity" for a "High Misdemeanor," and I am eternally grateful. Basically, the prosecutor said that since I was obviously unwell, I could do an out-of-court deal (1 year Christian rehab followed by fines and community service) to make the whole thing go away, or I could do 5 years probation and then expunge it (that's an option in my state if you commit a crime at or under age 25 with no priors). I took the harder, but more rewarding, option, and now I don't even have an arrest record. I'm also no longer a mental patient, thanks to Christ.

 

[taikina]

If somone is mentally ill, why don't they ever go under a bus, sint on a train track and get killed. Why does the mentally iill presumably always kill others. Since a persona is mentally ill, he won't know the difference or does he.

they do go under various vehicles, you just haven't heard of that because it doesn't stir as much conversation as shooting a lot of people.

edit: this is all just self-destructive behavior committed under crushing anxiety, either they destroy their lives by ending it directly, or by ruining their chance to get back on track with society by some atrocious act.

 

[ColdBlooded]

It seems to me like a truly insane person would shoot up a theater because he thought they were monsters out to kill him, or that his shoelaces told him to do it.

I don't care about insanity or completely rational intention.

If you kill someone, you should die. Not because they deserve it or because of justice or other ultimatum. If we we kill murderers, then they are no longer a threat and people will be less inclined to kill others due to fear of dying themselves.

 

[Drew]

If somone is mentally ill, why don't they ever go under a bus, sint on a train track and get killed. Why does the mentally iill presumably always kill others.

I politely suggest that you are mistaken and many people who are mentally ill do, in fact, kill themselves.