The trial has become something of a test of what happens when certain far-out strains of digital-age American radicalism collide with the criminal justice system.
Yeah a plea of insanity changes the conditions of everything. It is pleading guilty to the actions and acknowledging the need for the defendant to be removed from society. It’s saying “please send me to a psychiatric treatment facility instead of a prison”. Suffering from delusional thinking to the extent that you break into a representative’s house and attack their spouse with a hammer isn’t the sort of condition that gets you thrown on the streets after a little bit. It’s the sort of condition that gets you put in a prison’s psych ward for possibly life.
We don’t accept innocence by way of insanity out of the goodness of our hearts but because if we treat the criminally insane like ordinary criminals they’re just going to go out after release and do it again or they’re going to get themselves seriously hurt in prison.
Yeah a plea of insanity changes the conditions of everything. It is pleading guilty to the actions and acknowledging the need for the defendant to be removed from society. It’s saying “please send me to a psychiatric treatment facility instead of a prison”. Suffering from delusional thinking to the extent that you break into a representative’s house and attack their spouse with a hammer isn’t the sort of condition that gets you thrown on the streets after a little bit. It’s the sort of condition that gets you put in a prison’s psych ward for possibly life.
We don’t accept innocence by way of insanity out of the goodness of our hearts but because if we treat the criminally insane like ordinary criminals they’re just going to go out after release and do it again or they’re going to get themselves seriously hurt in prison.