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If someone is so mentally off center that they're a danger to others, they need to be kept from others.
Not guilty by reason of insanity should lead to a mental hospital.
The stay to be governed by how long it takes them to regain sanity and if they never do, then they stay forever.
An insanity plea shouldn't be a means to escape all the consequences of their actions.
Arguably, a successful insanity defense should yield a worse "punishment" than prison because release is predicated on showing they have, fully, recovered from their psychosis and are safe to be among the rest of us. That predication makes the sentence open ended and indefinite.
I'm open to the argument that any mental illness that leads to a homicide should end in euthanasia. I can also see how dangerous that idea is, so I'm not advocating for it.
We've a mental health problem in the US. We dismantled a working system in the Reagan era, rightfully in too many cases, and did nothing to replace it.
Solid, compassionate, institutions caring for the mentally ill were closed with the callous and abusive. Thanks Sixty Minutes!
It does need fixed, but who do you trust to do it?
The "mental patient liberation movement" started back in the 1960s. To be fair, there were cases of misdiagnosis, some inadvertent and some malicious. Also, mental institutions were often bleak, bleak places to be. But too many people thought One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a documentary, not a satirical novel. And if you watch the actual movie, you can clearly see that McMurphy's fellow patients really do need to be institutionalized.
ReplyDeleteOne sequel to closing down most if not all mental hospitals was the "homeless" problem. The hospitals were supposed to be replaced by in-neighborhood clinics---but the forces of NIMBY and BANANA rallied against them, and a lot of ex-patients resisted taking their medications, feeling that they were now cured. Add in the well-meant disappearance of SRO hotels and YMCAs offering lodgings, and you see the results on every street corner in some places.
A lengthy read which I found interesting: https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/how-to-convict-lindsay-clancy.
ReplyDeleteTo your point that an insanity plea should not result in escaping consequences, the piece linked about contains the following:
"Massachusetts law is sitting right there online. After a[not guilty by reason of insanity] verdict, the court may order up to forty days of observation. A subsequent commitment, if the required findings are made, lasts six months. After that, further commitments are for one year at a time. At each stage continued confinement requires the legal criteria to be met; if they are not, the person is discharged."
Regards