Quote:
Originally Posted by slayda
Whether this is true of Michigan or not, I personally like the idea and think it should be implemented, at least nation wide if not world wide. If an insane person murders someone, are they no less dead than had they been murdered by a sane person? In fact, some would only an insane person would commit murder.
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But if you are not responsible for your actions, should you be "punished" at all? Suppose you have 'flu, and you unwittingly pass on the virus to someone, and they die. Should you be charged with "murder" for that?
Mental illness is just as much an "illness" as 'flu. Yes, I know that there are many cases where people falsely claim mental illness as a defence against murder, but that does not change the fact that there are perfectly genuine cases where people really cannot be held responsible for their acts.
Did you read Simon Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman", which was a recent "MR Book Club" entry? It tells the true story of the role played in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary by a army officer (whose name escapes me for the moment) who, while living in London, suffered paranoid delusions of persecution. One night, he thought that there was someone in his room, chased the (imaginary) person out of the house, and shot, and killed, a perfectly innocent passer-by, thinking that he was the intruder. He was (quite rightly) found innocent of murder, but sentenced to be held in Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane, where he spent the rest of his life. Let us suppose that he had been able to be cured of his illness. Can you say that he deserved to be "punished" for killing the passer-by? I think that any reasonable person would say "no", because he could not be held accountable for his actions.