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Judge accepts theater shooting suspect's insanity plea

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eskimospy said:
Because the mentally ill are humans with a medical condition, not animals.

You really have a difficult time with understanding the difference between humans and animals it seems.
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If you are not responsible for your action you are not a person.

I am not sure what you have problems grasping that at the very least from a certain point of view this makes sense. I mean after all you are inherently embracing this pov when you support abortion. Merely having homo-sapien DNA does not make you a person.

jackstar7 said:
Our legal system makes a distinction between humans and other animals.
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I am making the same distinction. Humans do to jail, animals get put down.
 
nehalem256 said:
If you are not responsible for your action you are not a person.

I am not sure what you have problems grasping that at the very least from a certain point of view this makes sense. I mean after all you are inherently embracing this pov when you support abortion. Merely having homo-sapien DNA does not make you a person.
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This is simply factually incorrect. Responsibility for your actions is not a requirement for personhood under any definition I am aware of. If you want to keep using this novel definition, please provide a citation.
 
Doppel said:
He seems pretty insane to me. The fact nobody in this thread can really conceive of doing what he did (I hope) is because none of us are insane. It seems so ghastly and unconscionable to us because we are not nutty, so why is it that he was able to do it? How could he fire upon a crowd of people killing so many? Because he's fucking nuts. If this isn't evidence of it I don't know what is.

At the end of the day, I'm strictly against capital punishment at all times anyway, so whether the guy is legally sane and spends life in prison (as he would) or deemed nutty as shit, insane as hell, and spends life in a mental prison it doesn't matter to me. He'll never be a free man, never ever, anyway.
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If that fucking piece of garbage is insane, then he's damaged goods and should be removed from this Earth. If he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, he'd be sent to a treatment center and could be released if he's found to not be a danger to anyone or himself. He'll receive proper wholesome meals while 70 families have been virtually destroyed. That's justice for you.
 
dabuddha said:
If that fucking piece of garbage is insane, then he's damaged goods and should be removed from this Earth. If he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, he'd be sent to a treatment center and could be released if he's found to not be a danger to anyone or himself. He'll receive proper wholesome meals while 70 families have been virtually destroyed. That's justice for you.
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Do you curse the skies over each tornado that takes lives, too?

Acts of chaos happen. Some of them by human hands. Your thirst for vengeance is not a search for justice.
 
dabuddha said:
If that fucking piece of garbage is insane, then he's damaged goods and should be removed from this Earth. If he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, he'd be sent to a treatment center and could be released if he's found to not be a danger to anyone or himself. He'll receive proper wholesome meals while 70 families have been virtually destroyed. That's justice for you.
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It is extremely rare for some found to be not guilty by reason of insanity to be released.

And you are confusing vengeance with justice.
 
jackstar7 said:
Do you curse the skies over each tornado that takes lives, too?

Acts of chaos happen. Some of them by human hands. Your thirst for vengeance is not a search for justice.
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So you're equating this garbage taking a gun and shooting random innocent people with a tornado?
 
Vengeance is a part of justice.

Definition of VENGEANCE

: punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense

I could easily argue that life in prison is vengeance as well. My method though at least gives the victim's families some closure. Everyone knows that it won't bring back their loved ones but how can you live knowing that your child/sibling/parent is rotting in a grave while this garbage has a nice cushy bed and 3-4 square meals a day?
 
Doppel said:
Wow, really, just three and that is your black or white delineation point?

Your views are as skewed as most of our views are. In your case you've worked in a prison and though I have never worked in one I presume that your "clients" are in general total shit bags, so it has given you this "fuck them" view of potential criminals. I won't pretend I wouldn't have the same one if I worked where you do, but being around these people for so long certainly affects your views.Being against the death penalty doesn't mean I don't think what he did was barbaric. The death penalty is an anachronistic tool of weak societies, and it puts the US in the company of such lovely places as Saudi Arabia and China, and not the majority of other Western nations, which did away with this puerile eye-for-eye bullshit already. The US will eventually do away with it as well, it's absolutely inevitable. Already it's being phased out, it's just taking a long time.There is zero tolerance.
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And how is taking a serial killer and putting him in a semi-comfortable place for life at the expense of society actually any better for society?

Justice isn't a "nice" thing. Deal with it.
 
dabuddha said:
Vengeance is a part of justice.

Definition of VENGEANCE

: punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense

I could easily argue that life in prison is vengeance as well. My method though at least gives the victim's families some closure. Everyone knows that it won't bring back their loved ones but how can you live knowing that your child/sibling/parent is rotting in a grave while this garbage has a nice cushy bed and 3-4 square meals a day?
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Vengeance is a form of "justice", but is not a form of legal justice, at least not in the US.

And you make jail sound like a cake walk. There is a reason why the avg life expectancy of a person sentence to life is much lower than normal.

I am not sure if CO has the equivalent of SuperMax, but spending a life sentence of 23hrs a day in a 4x8 cell and having almost zero contact with other humans is said to be a far harsher punishment than death. Well so says many leading jurists.
 
Wreckem said:
I am not sure if CO has the equivalent of SuperMax, but spending a life sentence of 23hrs a day in a 4x8 cell and having almost zero contact with other humans is said to be a far harsher punishment than death. Well so says many leading jurists.
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So you are saying that conservatives are really the compassionate ones? 😀
 
Wreckem said:
Vengeance is a form of "justice", but is not a form of legal justice, at least not in the US.

And you make jail sound like a cake walk. There is a reason why the avg life expectancy of a person sentence to life is much lower than normal.

I am not sure if CO has the equivalent of SuperMax, but spending a life sentence of 23hrs a day in a 4x8 cell and having almost zero contact with other humans is said to be a far harsher punishment than death. Well so says many leading jurists.
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So you're telling me that victim's families prefer that the criminals that destroyed their families be put in prison for life (and in our fucked up justice system, it's rare that someone actually stays in for life) over having them executed? If so, I find that sad. If someone murdered my lil girl, they lose their right to live. Period. Call it vengeance, call it justice, call it whatever you want. It is what it is.
 
nehalem256 said:
So you are saying that conservatives are really the compassionate ones? 😀
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Liberal jurists want to do away with both life in solitary and the death penalty. Conservatives make the false argument that x(life in solitary) is worse, so we should keep y(death penalty).
 
dabuddha said:
So you're telling me that victim's families prefer that the criminals that destroyed their families be put in prison for life (and in our fucked up justice system, it's rare that someone actually stays in for life) over having them executed? If so, I find that sad. If someone murdered my lil girl, they lose their right to live. Period. Call it vengeance, call it justice, call it whatever you want. It is what it is.
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You do realize life in prison without the possibility of parole leads to a life sentence, you never get out.

There is a reason why Texas sentences and executes less people. In 2005 Texas finally gave juries the life without parole option. Prior to 2005, capital juries only had the option of life with parole or the death penalty.
 
dabuddha said:
If that fucking piece of garbage is insane, then he's damaged goods and should be removed from this Earth. If he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, he'd be sent to a treatment center and could be released if he's found to not be a danger to anyone or himself. He'll receive proper wholesome meals while 70 families have been virtually destroyed. That's justice for you.
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We don't know enough about the human mind to give me any belief whatsoever that within the lifetime of this person there will be any sufficient confidence from the medical community that any treatment he has received has made him no more a threat than the average person and thus there is no chance he will be out of prison ever alive.

I suspect a lot of people are against insanity pleas because they have this notion that the sick individual will go see a shrink for a few months, get some meds, and then go out back in the community. This won't happen. At the end of the day a mass murderer is not going to be set free because the risk is too high.
And how is taking a serial killer and putting him in a semi-comfortable place for life at the expense of society actually any better for society?

Justice isn't a "nice" thing. Deal with it.
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It is better because he cannot do it again.

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I find it baffling that so many actually think this guy IS sane. Whatever the hell would give you such an idea? I consider myself sane. Probably everyone in this thread considers themselves sane (and no it's not true that all insane think they are sane). So if we're all sane, and this guy was, shouldn't we all be scared of ourselves? It would be insane not to be.
 
Doppel said:
We don't know enough about the human mind to give me any belief whatsoever that within the lifetime of this person there will be any sufficient confidence from the medical community that any treatment he has received has made him no more a threat than the average person and thus there is no chance he will be out of prison ever alive.

I suspect a lot of people are against insanity pleas because they have this notion that the sick individual will go see a shrink for a few months, get some meds, and then go out back in the community. This won't happen. At the end of the day a mass murderer is not going to be set free because the risk is too high.It is better because he cannot do it again.

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I find it baffling that so many actually think this guy IS sane. Whatever the hell would give you such an idea? I consider myself sane. Probably everyone in this thread considers themselves sane (and no it's not true that all insane think they are sane). So if we're all sane, and this guy was, shouldn't we all be scared of ourselves? It would be insane not to be.
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Haven't they started letting Hinckley out?
 
dabuddha said:
From a victims perspective you're right. From a perps perspective, no
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So you have insight into the minds of the people who perpetrate these heinous acts?

That seems unlikely.

Secondly, I thought you were taking the side of the victims. Who cares what the perpetrator thinks?
 
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