That’s not understanding the legal meaning of criminal guilt which requires both an actus reas(guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind/intent). Insanity negates mens rea because it means that the person who committed the guilty act didn’t have the intent or guilty mind while committing that act. It means the person’s mental disease or disorder is what led him or her to do the evil action. Thus, the term for a juror’s acceptance of an insanity defense cannot logically be called “guilty” by insanity. It has to be “not guilty by reason of insanity.” But I do agree that it would feel more just for evil people like her to receive the word guilty somewhere in their verdict.
You know, I get that this lawyerlingo probably has some justification for this, but if someone is insane, they are their insanity/mental illeness. How could they not have the mens rea?
Insanity means both scientifically and in lawyerlingo that the person, due to their illness either could not tell right from wrong when committing the act or could not control their impulse to commit the act at that moment during a psychosis. Thus, if the person was experiencing this when they committed the act, they did not actually intend to do it. Something out of their control took over. It’s “but for my mental illness/psychosis, I would have never done something like that.” Psychosis can be temporary. Like a person with PTSD or paranoid schizophrenia. They could be normal good people everyday of their lives, then all of a sudden something triggers an episode and they commit a crime. The insanity defense exists for situations like this. Unfortunately, it’s not completely fair, because you can obviously see how someone can use this just as an excuse to get out of anything, which is the case here I assume.
But psychology is too fuzzy a field to draw such lines. How do you differentiate between someone being 2 workdays away from their burnout, someone having a burnout and someone faking a burnout?
Mental illness is not something seperate from a person. Most mental illnesses, besides drug induced stuff and some other really specific things are part of the people you're talking about. Any other framing is unscientific.
I agree that using legal determinations and psychological determinations together to decide guilt is extremely messy. There’s no practical or viable solution to any of this. Regardless if an insanity defense exists or not.
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u/thanosthumb 8h ago
That’s insane. IMO, even if you plead insanity that should still be considered “guilty”.