Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
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.
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I believe that no matter what, there would always be "guilt by hand", even if there is no "guilt by mind".
It doesn't necessarily follow that all circumstances are the same though, but I don't like the idea that it can completely excuse someone. The thing has been done.