The lawyers for the piece of filth that shot up the theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July have stated that they believe that their client is mentally ill and that they need more time to assess just how bat-crap crazy he is.
Really, Captain Obvious? You’re just now figuring out that a person who believes he’s the Joker from Batman, rigs his apartment to blow up like the Hindenberg when someone opens the door, puts on head to toe ballistic protection, and shoots a crowd of non-threatening, disarmed people might be mentally ill? You know, a few more statements like that and you’ll be giving your client grounds for appeal because he wasn’t represented by competent counsel.
Of course he’s crazy. Sane people do not do what he did. In fact, I don’t think I’ll get much argument when I say this: sane people do not kill other human beings for the fun of it or to get attention. The questions on my mind are these: First, did he know what he was doing was wrong, meaning did he have the mental capacity to choose not to do it, but did it anyway? Second, assuming an affirmative answer to the first question, what refreshments will they be selling at the execution and will it be held in a smoke-free venue?
If this waste of ATP is truly mad, and didn’t know what he was doing at the time of his crime was wrong, then I want to know how he got so far. Was he on medication and then make the conscious decision to stop taking them, knowing full well that he might be dangerous without them? If so, then may I be the first to chip in a few dollars toward the lumber for the gallows?
If he has been psychotic for years, and even the most rigorous pharmacological and psychiatric care didn’t keep him from murdering, then I have to ask why he was walking the streets? Every state in the Union has legal procedures for doctors, families, and civic authorities to convince a judge that someone is just too insane to allow to walk the streets, and then they put him somewhere where he can get treatment and not hurt anyone, including himself. In that event, the physicians who have been treating him should either be up on charges, have their licenses revoked, or both. If they knew he was dangerous, why didn’t they take steps to protect society from him and him from himself?
There’s really no good answer here, and to be honest, it’s all Monday morning quarterbacking. He did what he did, and no amount of treatment or civil retribution is going to bring back the dead, heal the wounded, and mend the families he destroyed. But there is some value in outrage here, and I hope that I’m not alone in mine.
DaddyBear’s Den 
derfreiheit
/ August 10, 2012You are not alone. That scum that shot up the AZ shopping center got a life sentence instead of the death penalty because of an insanity plea too.
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Mad Jack
/ August 10, 2012Main Lady is one of the people who is sometimes hired by the State to evaluate the criminally insane prior to trial. At times I’ve had to provide bodyguard service for her. Some of the threats are credible.
What I’ve gathered is that the shooter is very likely crazy AND legally insane, which means that he did not understand that what he was doing was wrong. If that’s the case, then the next several steps involve a long stay at a mental institution combined with treatment and a close examination of the system that allowed the killer to walk the streets freely without treatment.
One problem with our system is that it’s very easy to abuse. Years ago any head shrinker (psychologist or psychiatrist) could have someone arrested and incarcerated in a State run mental institution, and then medicated against the will of the patient – or treated without the patient’s consent. Such treatments involved drugs that were strong enough to cause permanent brain damage, electroshock therapy and lobotomy. Such things happened in the past and the evidence is still alive, but unable to speak coherently about just what happened. For her part, Main Lady helped rescue a man who had been institutionalized for over 25 years. The man wasn’t crazy; he spoke no English. His native language was an obscure dialect of some Slavic language. He’d lost his way home, you see, and the police arrested him and it went from bad to worse.
Being mindful of all that the questions that authorities ought to begin with center around who, if anyone, asked for help for the shooter and what was the result?
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Jake
/ August 10, 2012“who, if anyone, asked for help for the shooter and what was the result?”
His psychiatrist apparently broke confidentiality and went to the police “several weeks” before the shooting. The university’s threat assessment team (which the same psychiatrist was a member of) apparently thought they had no jurisdiction once he left the university (which he did before they had a chance to discuss his case).
So there are at least two failures to follow up on warning signs in this case.
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