Elizabeth Smart, David Mitchell and the "Insanity Defense"

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Since prosecutors and judges are often elected positions they must pander to the voter to stay employed. Meanwhile the average American voter is a bloodthirsty, reactionary puritan who thinks "revenge" and "misery" is synonymous with "justice." The circumstances of each case don't matter. All that matters is to the average American knuckle-dragger citizen that The Law is The Law, The Law is good, and those who break The Law must be punished as horribly as possible.

While that can be true, it's also simply important to realize that being sick doesn't necessarily excuse the crime if the person still knew what they did was wrong. And of course, there's the fact that not everyone who claims to be sick IS, or at least, is as sick as they claim to be. There are varying degrees of mental illness.

There is a difference between wanting justice and wanting revenge. I don't want this guy drawn and quartered, but I do want him punished because he committed a heinous crime.

When I worked at a book store, there was a guy who used to come in from time to time and talk nonsense, just absolute jibberish. Then one day, he just went up to a woman and started mastrubating right there in the store in front of her. He did this in broad daylight in a crowded store with a security guard within eyesight. We called the authorities, but did not press charges. This is someone I fully believe was SO crazy he had no idea what he's doing is wrong.

Someone who meticulously plans a kidnapping for months, then goes through various methods to avoid detection? Yeah, doesn't sound like someone who didn't understand that his actions were wrong.

 

[fuelair]

The prosecution has finished their case. Now it is up to the defense to try to show that David Mitchell, who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart eight plus years ago is not guilty by reason of insanity. It is not really in question whether he did it or not. His wife has already confessed and been sentenced. The question is whether he is sane.

Or is it?

Why should this monster get a pass just because he is insane? Could it not be argued that anybody who commits a heinous crime, whether it be murder or rape, is insane? What does being insane really have to do with it? Okay, it might make a difference in how you treat him while incarcerated. But should it make a difference in the sentencing? Who is more dangerous to society, a sane person who has committed a crime where he made bad decisions, or a crazy person who doesn't even recognize that he made bad decisions? Who is more likely to be rehabilitated?

For me, I say that insanity should not get you any time off. Indeed, it should get you extra time. An insane person has a much higher standard to meet in proving that they are fit to re-enter society. Perhaps they should be prevented from ever re-entering society, because they cannot be trusted to "stay sane".

But truth is, I'm not convinced that David Mitchell is insane, and indeed he was certified competent to stand trial. He does not ramble. He does not do anything but sing hymns in court, which, of course, gets him thrown out of the courtroom where the jurors don't see his nasty visage. Is this craziness? I say no. This is a calculated move by a violent sociopath who is trying to speed up his chance of getting out and doing the same thing again. Oh yeah, he's a megalomaniac. Yes, he has some crazy beliefs. But IMO, he knows exactly what he did and is putting on this act to escape punishment. He's no more crazy than many legions of Christians who use some weird concept of God to excuse their bad behavior.

So in either case, I hope they give him the maximum allowed. Frankly, I'd say this is one of the extremely rare cases where I'd give a nod to the death penalty. There is absolutely no doubt of his guilt. He has admitted it. His wife has testified to it. He tied this fourteen year-old girl between two trees and raped her repeatedly. There is no doubt that he feels no remorse whatsoever. It is apparent in everything he does. There is no doubt that he would be a danger if ever released. To do so would be unthinkable. I see no reason at all to keep this piece of scum alive. It would serve no purpose, other than to give the jail keepers some work. He is either incurably insane or incurably evil. Frankly, I'm not sure how much difference there is between the two.

So would keeping him alive show our humanity? I say no. I say it would be about as humane as cutting out a cancer but allowing it to stay alive.

I have never supported guilty, but insane or innocent by reason of insanity. If you can't not do that stuff and worse, you need to be put out of our misery. If you do it to one of mine....

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I fully admit that not being a psychiatrist, and not being familiar with the case past what I've seen in news stories, I can't exactly diagnose the guy with any certainty.

But his insanity does seem awfully convenient, in that the voices in his head always tell him to do things which benefit his vices and which he wants to do.

I'm not sure why this is surprising or hard to swallow, actually.

Now if he were claiming divine messages or demonic possession, it would be a good objections that he suspiciously found what he wanted to find. But for a hallucination? Something originating in his brain having something to do with himself? Why is that surprising?

 

[bookitty]

Since prosecutors and judges are often elected positions they must pander to the voter to stay employed. Meanwhile the average American voter is a bloodthirsty, reactionary puritan who thinks "revenge" and "misery" is synonymous with "justice." The circumstances of each case don't matter. All that matters is to the average American knuckle-dragger citizen that The Law is The Law, The Law is good, and those who break The Law must be punished as horribly as possible.

For instance:


You see, it's not enough that men like Mitchell and Dahmer would be rendered incapable of harming society through a lifetime of incarceration. Oh no! They must be killed and if the state is unwilling then they must be murdered ! Dahmer and another high-profile Wisconsin murderer were beaten to death with a mop handle by another inmate while the three were on janitorial detail. After the act, everyone snickered about how justice was finally served and there were even whispers about the prison making arrangements for the murder to take place. Virtually no one felt what happened was "wrong."

Take the issue of prison rape: A sane, compassionate person would think rape under any circumstance was abominable, but here in the U.S. prison rape is seen as part of the American prison experience. In fact, we laugh and tell jokes about "dropping the soap." We expect prisoners to be sexually degraded as part of their "punishment."

And those felons who "paid their debt to society?" They don't have much to look forward to on the outside. They can't vote. Their prospects for descent employment are close to nil. They are forever branded with the social stigma of "ex-con," a pariah now and forever. Is it any wonder why many go back to a life of crime?

When it comes to crime and punishment (and foreign policy) Americans want blood. They want their prisons to be Hell on Earth; places of pain and death where people are treated like animals for breaking the laws. It doesn't matter if the prisoner is mentally ill or handicapped, they must be treated like animals too. Anyone who dares speak out is painted a "soft-on crime liberal" who coddles the criminal element and wants to turn rapists and murders loose on red-blooded, mom/baseball/apple pie, Norman Rockwell-painted America's innocent children.

If you want compassion for prisoners from Americans, you have to wait for it's vindictive culture to change. You'll also have to wait until Hell freezes over...

...and since Hell doesn't exist...

And this is the reason that I am against the death penalty as carried out by the state. Don't get me wrong, there are many people who I personally believe are worthy of death and were they killed by the state, their passing wouldn't ruin my whole day. But there are many people whose philosophy has evolved beyond vengeance. A killing done in the name of the state is done in the name of those people as well. Dragging them into acting on my animal nature is wrong.

That being said, I really do hope that Mitchell is put away forever. It's not enough that he may/may not be insane. Insanity just isn't that cut and dry. He can meet the legal definition of insane and still know that what he did was wrong. As SC has pointed out, there is tons of evidence for that.

There are people who function in the world even though they have severe anti-social mental issues. They may have limited capacity for empathy, a hugely inflated sense of entitlement, or even a sadistic streak. But, in order to function, they play within the rules unless they can get away with something. Or until they snap like the PA gym killer, George Sodini.

We don't understand enough about how the human brain works to "cure" them. We may not understand it enough to even know if therapy/meds/incarceration has worked enough to consider them safe. So if someone is put away for insanity, the people in charge feel a moral obligation to keep them there.

 

[Normal Dude]

My view would be if this murderer can be treated and his illness cured he could be released.

The problem I have with this approach is how we know anything has actually been treated / cured. These are not typically surgical cases where it is clean-cut (pun not intended). As some have already used the example of pills to control an illness, what happens if the person stops taking their pills? I wouldn't take that risk.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I'm not sure why this is surprising or hard to swallow, actually.

Now if he were claiming divine messages or demonic possession, it would be a good objections that he suspiciously found what he wanted to find. But for a hallucination? Something originating in his brain having something to do with himself? Why is that surprising?

He is claiming divine messages though, he said that it was God telling him to do these things.

But other than that, I guess I'm just suspicious due to my personal experiences. I was in the anorexia ward of a mental hospital for some time and interacted with a lot of other people with varying degrees of mental illness, and their hallucinations/voices/etc told them to do all sorts of random things, but one of the most common things people said is that they were compelled to do things they didn't WANT to do. Hurt themselves. Wash their hands one hundred times a day. Do embarassing things.

I can't say that I met a single person whose voices or compulsions ONLY told them to do stuff they enjoyed doing.

What I think is the biggest myth about crazy people is that they don't KNOW their crazy. While that may be true sometimes in the most severe cases (like paranoid schizophrenia), most insane people I interacted with were perfectly aware that there was something seriously wrong with them, but at the same time, they still were compelled to act the way they did. I know what this is like myself. My anorexia was secondary to obsessive compulsive disorder. I didn't WANT to starve myself and eat only X number of calories a day or exercize for exactly X number of minutes every three hours or only eat orange foods on Mondays, I knew this was bad for me and it was ruining my life, and I didn't WANT to do it, but there was just something in me which compelled me to do so until I went on proper medication.

Also, even my compulsions were somewhat tempered by reason. I knew what I was doing was bad, and I went to great lengths to hide my anorexia for years from everyone I knew.
Was I mentally diseased into being anorexic? Yes. But I still knew what I was doing was wrong. That's why I tried to hide it. And what's more, I was treated that way, as were all the other mental patients. We were given strict rules and if we broke them, we were disciplined, and if we broke the rules often enough, you could get thrown out of the hospital (except for the most extreme cases, like people who can't even interact with others because they are so ill). "I'm crazy" was simply not excuse enough to not be personally responsible for your actions, even when those were actions that were a direct result of your mental illness (like an anorexic hiding food or a kleptomaniac stealing something).


Again, not a psychiatrist and obviously don't know the guy, so I fully admit this is speculation on my part. I'm not convinced the guy isn't insane, his claim just sounds awfully suspicious to me when he's saying God was telling him to feed his vices.

And even if he isn't lying about his mental illness, I still highly doubt he didn't know it was wrong because he tried to hide it.

 

[Tricky]

Good post, Cat. You too, Bluto.

 

[Madalch]

....This is someone I fully believe was SO crazy he had no idea what he's doing is wrong.

Someone who meticulously plans a kidnapping for months, then goes through various methods to avoid detection? Yeah, doesn't sound like someone who didn't understand that his actions were wrong.

You don't have to understand or agree that your actions are wrong in order to realize that someone will stop you from doing it.

If you believe that God has commanded you to do something that is against the law, it doesn't take much sanity to realize that the cops (or Satan's minions) will stop you from undertaking God's mission if they catch you.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

You don't have to understand or agree that your actions are wrong in order to realize that someone will stop you from doing it.

If you believe that God has commanded you to do something that is against the law, it doesn't take much sanity to realize that the cops (or Satan's minions) will stop you from undertaking God's mission if they catch you.

But you're still held to the law even if you think that law is unjust if you KNOW it's the law and that society considers it wrong, even if you don't personally. If you knew the consequences of your actions, that's what's important.

If you think pot being illegal is stupid and you think there's nothing wrong with smoking it, you're not held to lesser account if you're caught selling weed.

If you shoot an abortion doctor because of your religious beliefs and you HONESTLY believe that God wants you to do it, you still go to jail so long as it can be demonstrated that you understood that what you were doing was considered wrong by society and that your actions had legal consequences.


etc etc

Not agreeing with a law is not an excuse to break it, so long as you understood that it was in place and that breaking that law is considered wrong by the justice system where you reside.

 

[Rolfe]

Anybody really think this guy has a case to make for being insane? I'd doubt it myself.

Now obviously I'm not a psychiatrist and I didn't realise Peter Sutcliffe was genuinely suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, so I could well be wrong, but I'd have said Mitchell was toast and a good thing too.

Rolfe.

 

[blutoski]

Hmm.

Hopefulyl a lawyer around here can correct me, but my understadning of the insanity plea is not as simple as "I'm crazy, let me go". I believe (in the U.S.) they have to show that the person could not distinguish right from wrong. Therefore a diagnosed sociopath would still be guilty of murder. Or a metnally retarded child, depending on circumstances adn that childs understanding. Things like attempts to hide the crime from others, dispose of the body, lying to cover for it, and similar point against an insanity defense.

Of course, I may be completely off-base here, so I eagerly await correction

This is correct, with the caveat that they're focussing on the capacity at the time of the crime, rather than current diagnosis.

For example, if a person committed a crime while psychotic, but recovered with medication, this means they may be judged fit to stand trial (at the time of the crime), while at the same time, found not guilty due to insanity (at the time of the crime).

In the rare situation where they attempt to hide a past crime, it's plausible that the crime took place during a psychosis, and the person recovered. In which case, the charges may be restricted to witholding evidence.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Cat, OCD isn't the same as psychosis, though. Obsessions and compulsions are one thing, hearing voices or seeing ghosts or whatnot is a whole different thing. You can't really judge one by what you saw in the other, any more than I can judge an airplane by what I know my car does.

Also it seems to me like you have by definition a biased sample there. You're talking about an anorexia ward, which already gives you only those who fit a very specific form of even OCD. You're not going to see, say, those whose compulsion is to play World Of Warcraft because they _like_ it (as opposed to doing something they dislike), or whose compulsion is to surf for porn, or to refresh some forum once a second, or all the other compulsions which are self-serving after all.

Heck, even for the negative kinds of OCD, sure, there is the kind where one does stupid self-destructive rituals just to stop thinking about the real obsession, but there's also the kind which really is self-serving in light of the real obsession. E.g., a lot of those in that anorexia ward probably weren't starving themselves as some kind of self-punishment, but because they think they don't measure up to a delusional standard of ultra-thin beauty. In the end it was self-serving, in that it helped move them more towards that ideal body shape they wanted. I.e., even there that compulsion is making some basically do what they genuinely wanted. They wanted to lose weight.

Ditto for obsessively washing hands, for example. Sure, for some it's a ritual to stop thinking of other stuff, but for some it's just a way to achieve what they obsessively wanted: being super-clean.

And really for a lot of others, the motives are equally self-serving in some other way. E.g., some really want attention and fame, no matter what the cost. Think, Herostratus. It seems that especially among those who grew up without much love or attention from the parents, getting it in any way possible can get to be an obsession. So some will end up practicing the violin for 14 hours a day, just to be once famous for that, and some will cut themselves or post a youtube video of themselves doing something incredibly stupid as a way to get their next 15 minutes of fame. In the end, it still is self-serving.

Also, that he claimed hearing divine voices, well, it seems to me like the court already pretty much agreed that it wasn't God talking to him, so there's not much to debate there. The whole ruling him insane is pretty much establishing that it came from his own brain. And my question was in light of that: since it came from his own brain, is it so surprising that it had to do with what he was thinking about?

 

[quadraginta]

Indeed. I remember John Douglass (FBI serial killer investigator) giving his opinion on insanity/not responsible for their actions defence as being (paraphrased from memory): "I never heard of any of them who were insane/irresponsible enough to attempt to murder someone in front of a uniformed police officer. If the opportunity wasn't there then they would go away and try again elsewhere or on another night".

Wendell Williamson opened fire on buildings, passing cars, and ... fatally ... on two passing pedestrians in broad daylight on a weekday afternoon on West Franklin St., the main downtown street in Chapel Hill, NC. He was captured after being wounded by the police who were there when he started shooting.

He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized, where he remains, fifteen years later.

In an interesting side note. The psychiatrist who was treating him for his schizophrenia prior to the incident was successfully sued for $500,000 because he retired and let Williamson's treatment just drop instead of making sure he found another doctor. That case was upheld in the first appeal, and overturned in the second.

 

[shandyjan]

I think peoples crazy wants and needs have to be seperate from real insanity. In the cases of those who are already in the system when they commit a crime, it isn't the same as someone who is not diagnosed, and hides a criminal lifestyle for years.
We can easily say someone 'must be crazy' for the crimes they commit, but there's different degrees of crazy!

 

[Darat]

...snip...

If you want compassion for prisoners from Americans, you have to wait for it's vindictive culture to change. You'll also have to wait until Hell freezes over...

...and since Hell doesn't exist...

I disagree with that assessment, a hundred or so years ago America led the world in prison reform, the USA used to be the "enlightened" country that other countries looked to and tried to emulate. Whilst the attitude in the USA seems to have changed I am hopeful that it could again change.

 

[dtugg]

I disagree with that assessment, a hundred or so years ago America led the world in prison reform, the USA used to be the "enlightened" country that other countries looked to and tried to emulate. Whilst the attitude in the USA seems to have changed I am hopeful that it could again change.

As an American, I highly doubt that attitudes towards criminals will change while any of us are still alive. Not that there is anything wrong with the American attitude towards criminals (at least violent ones; locking people up for victimless crimes such as drug offenses is BS).

 

[Ryokan]

I understand that it's near impossible to be certain that someone has recovered from whatever illness caused them to commit a crime, and therefore would be very reluctant to let them free.

But that's a completely different argument. There are people here saying that if they recovered, they should still go to jail afterwards.

 

[Flo]

Since prosecutors and judges are often elected positions they must pander to the voter to stay employed. Meanwhile the average American voter is a bloodthirsty, reactionary puritan who thinks "revenge" and "misery" is synonymous with "justice." The circumstances of each case don't matter. All that matters is to the average American knuckle-dragger citizen that The Law is The Law, The Law is good, and those who break The Law must be punished as horribly as possible.

For instance:


You see, it's not enough that men like Mitchell and Dahmer would be rendered incapable of harming society through a lifetime of incarceration. Oh no! They must be killed and if the state is unwilling then they must be murdered ! Dahmer and another high-profile Wisconsin murderer were beaten to death with a mop handle by another inmate while the three were on janitorial detail. After the act, everyone snickered about how justice was finally served and there were even whispers about the prison making arrangements for the murder to take place. Virtually no one felt what happened was "wrong."

Take the issue of prison rape: A sane, compassionate person would think rape under any circumstance was abominable, but here in the U.S. prison rape is seen as part of the American prison experience. In fact, we laugh and tell jokes about "dropping the soap." We expect prisoners to be sexually degraded as part of their "punishment."

And those felons who "paid their debt to society?" They don't have much to look forward to on the outside. They can't vote. Their prospects for descent employment are close to nil. They are forever branded with the social stigma of "ex-con," a pariah now and forever. Is it any wonder why many go back to a life of crime?

When it comes to crime and punishment (and foreign policy) Americans want blood. They want their prisons to be Hell on Earth; places of pain and death where people are treated like animals for breaking the laws. It doesn't matter if the prisoner is mentally ill or handicapped, they must be treated like animals too. Anyone who dares speak out is painted a "soft-on crime liberal" who coddles the criminal element and wants to turn rapists and murders loose on red-blooded, mom/baseball/apple pie, Norman Rockwell-painted America's innocent children.

If you want compassion for prisoners from Americans, you have to wait for it's vindictive culture to change. You'll also have to wait until Hell freezes over...

...and since Hell doesn't exist...

It's not just Americans. You will find exactly the same attitude, the same bloodlust, the same barbaric pronouncements, the same horrible jokes all over Europe. Fortunately, judges and prosecutors are generally not elected, which minimizes the influence of the worst neanderthals on the metering of justice, but still ...

 

[Aepervius]

I fully admit that not being a psychiatrist, and not being familiar with the case past what I've seen in news stories, I can't exactly diagnose the guy with any certainty.

But his insanity does seem awfully convenient, in that the voices in his head always tell him to do things which benefit his vices and which he wants to do.

Also, being mentally ill isn't enough, the person has to be insane to the point they don't know that what they did was wrong. The fact that he kidnapped her at night at knifepoint, chained her up, then disguised her, and intentionally tried to thwart rescue efforts in various ways makes it seem like this guy knew he wasn't supposed to be doing what he was doing.

I think for me (in absence of formal training) the cut off would be : was he pretending to be insane even during the full time before and during the kidnapping ? Did the awful behavior starts only when getting caught ?

If even before the kidnapping he was like that, then one cannot say it is a pretend game.

Anyway not enough info for me to judge.

 

[Baylor]

I disagree with that assessment, a hundred or so years ago America led the world in prison reform, the USA used to be the "enlightened" country that other countries looked to and tried to emulate. Whilst the attitude in the USA seems to have changed I am hopeful that it could again change.

If the USA won't change its attitudes on the sick and the poor what makes you think it'll change its attitude on criminals?