[ExI] insanity plea

[John Clark]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013  Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > My mental malfunction has been repaired and I am quite literally not the
>> same man I was, so if the doctors can say beyond a reasonable doubt that I
>> am no more likely to murder again than the general population then I should
>> be released. However in the real world the thought experiment you describe
>> almost never happens,  and I'm not sure if I should have said "almost".
>>
>
> > The case I have described is of a treatable organic psychosis.


Then why do people still get murdered?


> > Much more commonly involved in forensic cases are the so-called
> functional psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These can
> also be treated very effectively with medication in at least 70% of cases,
>

Maybe treatment can help a little bit for 70% of those with garden variety
depression or bipolar disorder. Maybe. But that's not what I'm talking
about, I'm talking about turning a murder into a non-murderer. And I think
that someone murdering again AFTER he has already been convicted of murder
is as great a failure of the law as executing a innocent man; so even if
your very dubious statistic of a 70% success rate is correct that's not
nearly good enough, you certainly wouldn't put somebody to death if you
thought there was only a 70% chance they were guilty. I would be in favor
of releasing a murder if it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that
the treatment was so good he would be incapable of murdering again. Do you
have any treatment like that?


> > but the problem is that the symptoms recur if the medication stops.
>

Not if the medication is cyanide, with that drug only one treatment is
needed and you can be quite certain that the murdering symptoms will not
reoccur.

  John K Clark
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