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July 8, 2008
Posted: 01:50 PM ET
NEW YORK — So let’s talk about insanity as a legal matter. Because we know that Anthony Lacalamita is crazy in any common sense of the word. He was diagnosed as bipolar. He attempted suicide three times before he stormed his workplace and started shooting. But our legal definition of insanity is murky at best. Yet we ask juries to use it to make decisions about a defendants mental state that even medical professionals are hard pressed to diagnose. That’s why one jurors insanity is another jurors guilty verdict. Andres Yates was insane when she drowned her babies. Or so said the Texas jury that tried her the second time around. But not Jeffrey Dahmer who ate his victims in Wisconsin. Just last month a jury couldn’t agree whether Naveed Haq was insane when he stormed Jewish Federation Headquarters in Seattle. But Charles Manson, crazy by anyone’s standards, was not under California law, the legal definition of insanity. It is rooted in centuries old notions of what it means to be crazy. And it does not complicate mental illness as just that, illness. That’s why I think it’s time to rethink what it means to be crazy in court. That’s the Last Word. –Jami Floyd, In Session anchor Filed under: Jami Floyd Last Word |
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