Would this be a likely outcome in the U.S?

[Grakatt]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/07/08/lindh.sentence/index.html

 

[crazycarl]

well we put the guy who tried to kill Reagan in a mental ward because they thought he was crazy... that was awhile ago though I imagine today he would be put to death

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Well, since the same thing, more or less, happened to John Hinckley, I'd say the answer is a big yes.

If you're referring to the specific mechanism here (that is, that the appellate court found the guy "too insane to be jailed" after he was convicted and sentenced), then no, it wouldn't happen quite this way. Under our system, once he was convicted, his mental state would cease to be relevant to his sentence (though it might compel a judge to recommend a facility with some kind of treatment availability), so unless the appellate court overturned the conviction and sentence entirely, they couldn't, in any instance I can think of, revisit the issue of his sanity in order to re-open his sentencing.

 

[Grakatt]

Hmm
And Donvito: Thank you for your quite informative answer 🙂 That was part of my interest, so.

 

[Jhhnn]

Other than the possible technicalities already described, it depends on the public mood and the jurisdiction. A mother in texas kills her children in a psychotic episode, avoids the death penalty only because the jury knows that's what she wants, while in a similar scenario a post-partum depressed mother in a Denver suburb receives deferred prosecution on the basis of obvious raving insanity...

Or there's this little gem-

http://litigationcenter.bna.com/pic2/lit.nsf/id/BNAP-5JWSCR?OpenDocument

A known whackjob is declared sane for the purposes of trial, via medication, sentenced to death. He refuses his meds, returns to his paranoid schizophrenic delusions, since the state can't execute the insane... They want to force medicate him, essentially to death... and the SCOTUS has recently let the lower court ruling stand...

How screwed up is that? How can a physician possibly prescribe such treatment knowing that it will lead to the involuntary death of the patient?