Reply #53: I know our system, and even without a conviction she is in for a long time [View All]

[patcox2]

Look at Hinckley, he was never convicted.

I am amazed at the people who cannot even accept a legitimate case of an insanity defense. If ever there were a legitimate case, this is it. It all started with the law and order propagandists of the right wing propagating the lie that the insanity defense is common and that people "get away" with it all the time. But now people just don't even accept the basic premise, which has been part of our society's generally accepted moral principles for 2000 years and part of our legal system for 1000 years, that insane people ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE. They are not responsible for their acts. They are not held to the same standard.

It seems to be related to this "government as nanny" mentality, that the government should be required to prevent any bad thing from ever happening to anyone, ever, and should criminally sanction anyone who ever could have done anything to stop anything bad from happening. It completely misses the boat on the most basic principle of moral culpability. It is not the happening of the bad thing that determines guilt, it is the intent of the Actor. People are not responsible unless they act with guilty intent.

Negligence is not criminal culpability except in the rarest of cases. The abandonment of this principle and the expansion of criminal liability to the merely negligent will do more to make this society a police state than ten Patriot Acts. Thats the road you are driving on when you abandon the scienter requirement and expand liability to, for example, the husband in this case. Hey, what about her parents, shouldn't they have stepped in, knowing her condition? They knowingly allowed her to be a danger to her children. Andwhat about the doctor who diagnosed and treated her, he should be convicted of murder, too, right? It takes a village, as Hillary so fatuously asserts, the whole village failed, then so the whole village should be executed for murder, right? And the pastor of her church, for preaching that women should be subservient and raise children. Kill everyone, its everyone's fault. Thats the ticket. Nazis.