Thread: getting away with murder

Originally Posted by jockeys

if I become brain damaged AND THEN COMMIT A VIOLENT FELONY then yes, go ahead and give me a ride in old sparky. or anyone in my family. hell, I'd throw the switch myself, and feel confident that my family would do the same for me.

don't really care how messed up people are as long as they behave. i never said being sick in the head was grounds for execution... you have to qualify the normal way, I just don't think people who are sick in the head should be exempted IF THEY COMMIT an execution-worthy crime.

One other point about your above-post: brain damage is not the legal equivalent of the concept of criminal insanity. Someone can sustain brain damage and, for example, lose a portion of their fine motor skills; or have a diminished ability to recall recent events; etc. Being found criminally insane is a narrow, very severe diagnosis. You might want to research how criminal insanity is legally defined, as you'd see that it includes being incapable of distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong. That is far, far different that the simple concept of brain damage. Our criminal justice system is predicated on punishing morally culpable conduct-not the rote actions of persons who lack the cognitive capacity to understand what they are doing. Yes-they made need to be institutionalized for their own safety as well as the safety of society at large. But our criminal justice system does not hold them criminally liable for purposes of imposing punitive sanctions-that is reserved for those who do bad things and have the mental capacity to understand the badness of what they did.

Originally Posted by billyjeff2

One other point about your above-post: brain damage is not the legal equivalent of the concept of criminal insanity

I'm well aware of that, however trev1960 is evidently not. You'll see that my comments were in direct response to his post making that mistaken connection.